D 

^/ 


Errors  of  H.  G.  Wells 

<•/?  Catholics  Criticism  of  the 
"  Outline  of  History  " 

By 
RICHARD   DOWNEY,   D.D, 


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4. 


Borne  Errors  of  H.  G.  Wells 


Some  Errors  of  H.  G.  Wells 

atholics  Criticism  of  the 
"  Outline  of  History  " 

By 
RICHARD  DOWNEY,   D.D. 


t  t  t  f  t 

t  t   t  t 
t  t  t 

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^,  Cincinnati,  Chicago 

BENZIGER    BROTHERS 


Printers  to  the 


Publishers  of 


Holy  Apostolic  See       Benziger's  Magazine 
1921 


To  the  Reader 

THIS  booklet  is  a  revised  reprint  of  three 
articles  which  appeared  in  The  Month  for 
August,  September,  and  October,  1920.  They 
are  republished  by  kind  permission  of  the  editor 
of  The  Month,  to  whom  the  author  is  indebted 
for  many  helpful  suggestions.  The  references 
throughout  to  The  Outline  of  History  are  to  the 
edition  in  two  volumes  published  by  George 

Newnes,  Ltd. 

R.  D. 


461923 


*• 


Some  Errors  of  H.  G.  Wells 


FOR  many  months  the  fortnightly  parts  of 
Mr.  H.  G.  Wells's  Outline  of  History  have 
dazzled  the  eye  and  fired  the  imagination, 
and,  at  last,  the  twenty-fourth  and  concluding 
part,  bearing  on  its  cover  a  coloured  map  of 
"  The  United  States  of  the  World,"  has  appeared, 
some  few  weeks  after  the  publication  of  a  revised 
edition  of  the  complete  work  in  one  volume. 
The  time  is  opportune,  therefore,  for  a  survey 
of  this  universal  history.  The  present  pamphlet 
is  not  meant  to  be  an  exhaustive  critique,  but 
rather  an  antidote  to  some  of  the  chief  errors 
into  which  it  would  seem  that  Mr.  Wells  has 
been  betrayed  by  his  prevailing  bent  of  mind. 
For  his  literary  craftsmanship,  his  art  of  presen- 
tation, his  selective  judgment,  and  his  courage 
in  attempting  such  a  gigantic  task,  it  is  impossible 
not  to  have  admiration,  and  on  this  account  it 
is  the  more  regrettable  that  he  has  allowed  his 
preconceived  philosophical  and  religious  notions 
to  enter  so  largely  into  what  purports  to  be  a 
record  of  fact.  The  result  is  that  the  outline 
with  which  he  presents  us  is,  in  many  places, 
badly  warped. 

"  The  pre-human  ancestor  was  an  ape,"  says 
Mr.  Wells  in  his  errata  to  Parts  L,  II.,  III.     He 


'.  4NTHROPOLOGT 


makes  this  statement  with  the  confidence  of  a 
man  who  has  established  it  beyond  rebuttal. 
Nor  is  there  any  substantial  modification  of  this 
opinion  in  the  note  on  this  point  which  he  prints 
in  his  final  errata:  "  There  is  too  much  stress 
upon  the  lemur  in  the  account  of  the  ancestry 
of  man.  The  ancestor  of  man  and  the  higher 
apes  was  probably  a  ground  monkey  and  not  a 
lemur."  It  is  therefore  worth  while  to  examine 
the  evidence  on  wrhich  his  statement  rests,  the 
more  so  as  the  examination  throws  an  interesting 
sidelight  on  Mr.  Wells's  method  of  handling 
facts.  Chief  amongst  the  anthropological  data 
upon  which  any  judgment  as  to  the  simian  origin 
of  man  must  be  based  are  the  extant  remains 
of  "  primeval  man,"  and  these  are  usually  divided 
into  three  groups : 

(I.)  Remains  supposed  to  date  from  the  late 
Pliocene  or  early  Pleistocene  epoch  (c.  550,000 
B.C.) — the  Pithecanthropus,  Eoanthropus,  Homo 
Heidelbergensis,  and  the  Galley  Hill  man. 

(II.)  Remains  of  the  Homo  Neanderthalensis,  or 
Primigenius  (c.  50,000  B.C.). 

(III.)  Remains  of  the  Homo  sapiens^  or  rectns 
(c.  35,000  B.C.) — Aurignacian,  Cro-Magnon,  and 
Grimaldi  types. 

Mr.  Wells's  task  is  to  show  how  the  Homo 
sapiens  evolved  from  an  ape.  He  devotes  a 
xvhole  chapter  (VIII.)  to  the  Pliocene  man  of 
Group  I.,  without  shedding  the  faintest  ray  of 
light  on  his  origin.  He  discourses  pleasantly 
1  P.  762 


THE  ANCESTOR  OF  MAN 


of  Pithecanthropus,  and  illustrates  his  remarks 
with  a  picture  of  the  "  possible  appearance  "  of 
Pithecanthropus — no  mean  achievement  when  we 
reflect  that  the  entire  remains  consist  of  a  thigh- 
bone, two  molar  teeth,  and  the  top  of  a  skull. 
What  he  does  not  tell  his  readers,  however,  is 
that  the  Pithecanthropus  is  the  discredited  har- 
binger of  the  whole  family  of  "  missing  links." 
Time  was  when  popularizers  of  "  science," 
following  the  lead  of  Haeckel,  insisted  on  the 
continuous,  gradual  development  of  man  from 
the  ape  through  this  very  Pithecanthropus.  Thus, 
Professor  Schwalbe  in  1909  declared  from  his 
chair  in  the  University  of  Strassburg  that  "  what 
Darwin  missed  most  of  all — intermediate  forms 
between  apes  and  man — has  been  recently  fur- 
nished. E.  Dubois,  as  is  well  known,  discovered 
in  1893,  near  Trinil  in  Java,  in  the  alluvial  deposits 
of  the  River  Bengawan,  an  important  form  repre- 
sented by  a  skullcap,  some  molars,  and  a  femur. 
'His  opinion — much  disputed  as  it  has  been — 
that  in  this  form,  which  he  named  Pithecanthropus , 
he  has  found  a  long-desired  transition  form  is 
shared  by  the  present  writer.  Volz  says  with 
justice  that  even  if  Pithecanthropus  is  not  the 
missing  link,  it  is  undoubtedly  a  missing  link."1 
Since  that  time,  however,  anthropologists  have 
pointed  out  that  it  is  not  at  all  clear  that  the  Java 
remains  belong  to  the  same  skeleton,  since,  though 
found  in  the  same  strata,  they  were  some  con- 
siderable distance  apart.  Anatomists,  too,  have 
1  Darwin  and  Modern  Science,  pp.  127,  128. 


NEANDERTHAL  MAN 


fallen  foul  of  this  "  intermediate  form,"  many 
experts  pronouncing  the  thigh-bone  purely  human 
and  the  teeth  and  skull  purely  simian.  To  add 
to  the  general  confusion,  the  date  of  the  remains 
is  a  very  vexed  question;  and,  finally,  the  whole 
status  of  the  Pithecanthropus  has  been  rudely 
shaken  by  the  recent  discovery  of  several  supposed 
types  of  prehistoric  man  which  differ  essentially 
from  the  Pithecanthropus — notably  the  Piltdown 
man,  at  present  in  course  of  reconstruction  from 
the  remains  found  in  Sussex  as  recently  as  1912. 
As  a  "  missing  link,"  therefore,  the  Pithecanthro- 
pus is  pretty  generally  abandoned;  but  Mr.  Wells, 
though  he  has  not  succeeded  in  finding, another 
to  take  its  place,  holds  fast  to  his  faith  in  the 
kinship  of  men  and  monkeys. 

In  the  next  chapter  he  addresses  himself  to  a 
consideration  of  the  primitive  men  represented 
by  Group  II.  To  these  we  are  somewhat  abruptly 
introduced  as  follows :  "  In  the  earlier  phase,  the 
third  Interglacial  period,  a  certain  number  of  small 
family  groups  of  men  (Homo  Neanderthalensis), 
and  probably  of  sub-men  (Eoanthropus),  wandered 
over  the  land,  leaving  nothing  but  their  flint 
implements  to  witness  to  their  presence. "]  Cer- 
tainly in  1857  the  top  of  a  skull  and  a  few  bones 
were  found  in  the  Neanderthal  near  Dusseldorf. 
The  abnormal  shape  of  the  skull  led  many  to 
suppose  that  it  represented  a  hitherto  unknown 
type  of  man,  and  this  Surmise  gained  support  by 
the  subsequent  finds  of  skulls  and  skeletal  parts, 

1  P.  47- 


EXIT  THE  APE-ANCESTRT  THEORY    5 

notably  in  Belgium  in  1884,  and  in  Croatia  in 
1899.  These  are  the  facts  on  which  Mr.  Wells 
exercises  his  brilliant  imagination.  But  what  we 
really  want  to  know  is,  where  did  this  Homo 
Neanderthalensis  come  from  ?  The  average 
reader  of  Mr.  Wells's  serial  gathers  the  impression 
that  this  second  type  in  some  mysterious  way 
"  evolved  "  out  of  the  first,  and  certainly  Mr. 
Wells  says  nothing  to  undeceive  him.  Yet  the 
gulf  between  these  two  groups  has  never  been 
bridged.  Thus  Mr.  E.  O.  James,  in  his  recent 
Introduction  to  Anthropology  (1919),  says:  "  In 
our  opinion  Pithecanthropus  does  not  represent 
either  a  precursor  or  an  early  phase  of  Neanderthal 
man,  but  a  development  on  lines  of  its  own.  .  .  . 
There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  the  Neander- 
thal type  does  not  represent  a  development  of 
Pithecanthropus  "}  And  even  if  it  did,  it  would 
not  help  Mr.  Wells  in  the  least,  since  he  admits 
that  after  lasting  out  for  more  than  200,000 
years  the  "  Neanderthaler  race  "  became  extinct: 
"  Finally  ...  a  different  human  type  came 
upon  the  scene,  and,  it  would  seem,  exterminated 
Homo  Neanderthalensis  ."*  So,  in  any  case,  exit 
the  man  who  was  descended  from  an  ape. 

Mr.  Wells  does  not  seem  to  have  heard  of  the 
modern  difficulties  against  his  ape-ancestry  theory. 
In  the  course  of  an  article  on  "  The  Evolution 
of  Man  and  his  Mind,"  in  Science  Progress  for 
July,  1920,  Major  Thomas  Cherry  contends  that 
"  back  teeth  "  are  not  "  evidence  of  our  simian 
1  P.  12.  2  p.  52. 


"HOMO  SAPIENS' 


ancestry,  but  on  the  contrary,  quite  the  opposite"  ;* 
that  "  Man's  skin  is  not  a  monkey's  skin  minus  the 
hair.  It  is  far  better  supplied  with  sweat  glands, 
and  man  can  thus  survive  a  degree  of  exposure 
to  the  sun  which  is  speedily  fatal  to  a  monkey. 
Man's  naked  skin  is  a  conspicuous  contrast  to 
the  condition  of  all  the  other  primates  ";2  and 
— sad  blow  to  Mr.  Wells,  with  his  diagrammatic 
picture  of  "  foot  of  man  and  gorilla  " — "  the 
specialized  monkey  foot  may  [thus]  be  ruled  out 
as  a  stage  in  the  ancestry  of  man."3  All  this 
chatter  of  Mr.  Wells  about  arboreal  apes  and  his 
highly  imaginative  descriptions  of  Pliocene  and 
Neanderthal  man  are  somewhat  beside  the  point, 
since  "  no  stage  in  the  ancestry  of  man  may 
have  been  very  like  either  one  or  other  of  these 
extinct  races."4  We  are  relieved,  therefore,  when 
Mr.  Wells  turns  his  attention,  and  ours,  to  the 
new  human  type,  indicated  by  the  third  group 
of  remains,  the  Homo  sapiens,  or  recens.  We  are 
consumed  with  eagerness  to  know  something  of  the 
antecedents  of  this  race;  we  are  thrilled  to  think 
that  in  this  chapter  Mr.  Wells  is  at  last  about  to 
solve  the  knotty  problem  of  our  simian  ancestry. 
But  all  the  knowledge  that  Mr.  Wells  imparts  on 
this  vital  question  is  compressed  into  one  single 
period :  "  At  present  we  can  only  guess  where 
and  how,  through  the  slow  ages,  parallel  with 
the  Neanderthal  cousin,  these  first  true  men  arose 
out  of  some  more  ape-like  progenitor."'  So,/ 

1  P.  89.       2  P.  92.       3  P.  77.       *  Science  Progress,  p.  90.7 
5  P.  52.    Mr.  Wells's  italics. 


MR.  WELLS  IS  ONLT  GUESSING!      7 

after  all,  when  it  comes  to  discussing  the  origin 
of  the  first  true  men,  Mr.  Wells  is  only  guessing  ! 
But  to  soften  the  blow  the  guess  is  accompanied 
by  a  coloured  plate  of  "  Our  Neanderthaloid 
Ancestor."  Observe  the  unobtrusive  manner 
in  which  Mr.  Wells  bridges  the  gulf  between 
Groups  II.  and  III.  In  a  parenthesis,  mark  you, 
the  extinct  Homo  Neanderthalensis,  a  type  of 
"  nearly  human  creatures,"  says  Mr.  Wells,  is 
suddenly  raised  to  the  rank  of  cousin  to  the  first 
true  men.  Mr.  Wells  is  an  adept  at  this  kind  of 
logical  theft.  Having,  with  the  aid  of  a  coloured 
plate,  persuaded  the  reader  that  the  Homo  Nean- 
derthalensis  was  almost  human,  Mr.  Wells  pro- 
ceeds to  foist  him  on  to  the  British  public  as  a 
cousin  !  To  such  shifts  is  the  new  logic  reduced 
in  the  interests  of  the  inspiring  belief  that  man  is 
descended  from  an  ape.  Venite  adoremus  ! 

Most  of  Mr.  Wells's  earlier  chapters  are  tenden- 
tial.  Wittingly  or  unwittingly  he  conveys  the 
impression  that  a  theistic  hypothesis  is  super- 
fluous in  any  rational  interpretation  of  the  uni- 
verse. From  Democritus  to  the  latest  rationalist, 
the  favourite  method  of  eliminating  the  Deity 
has  always  been  to  profess  to  account  for  the 
cosmos  by  describing  the  manner  in  which  it 
has  evolved.  By  a  sort  of  legerdemain,  descrip- 
tion is  substituted  for  explanation.  It  is  as  if 
we  sought  to  show  that  a  watch  need  not  have 
had  a  maker  by  giving  a  minute  description  of 
the  way  in  which  the  hands  are  moved  by  the 
internal  mechanism.  Evolution,  says  a  prominent 


8  NATURAL  SELECTION 

rationalist,  has  made  an  end  of  Paleyism.  W.  G. 
Ward  cleverly  illustrates  the  fallacy  of  this  kind 
of  reasoning  by  supposing  the  case  of  a  philo- 
sophical mouse  imprisoned  in  a  piano,  instituting 
an  enquiry  into  the  cause  of  the  music.  The 
sound,  it  argues,  results  from  the  vibration  of 
the  strings ;  the  vibration  is  caused  by  the  blows  of 
the  hammers;  "and  so  much  at  least  is  evident 
now — viz.,  that  the  sounds  proceed  not  from  any 
external  and  arbitrary  agency — from  the  inter- 
vention, e.g.)  of  any  higher  will — but  from  the 
uniform  operation  of  fixed  laws."]  After  the 
manner  of  the  mouse,  Mr.  Wells  accounts  for  all 
existing  living  beings  by  the  Survival  of  the 
Fittest,  or  as  he  prefers  to  call  it,  the  Survival 
of  the  Fitter.  When  asked  to  account  for  this 
survival,  he  points  to  Natural  Selection,  which, 
he  assures  us,  is  an  established  law.  Yet,  obviously, 
as  Dr.  Flint  remarks  in  his  Theism,  "  Natural 
Selection  did  not  bring  about  the  conditions 
under  which  it  operates.  If  the  whole  earth  had 
been  flooded  with  water  only  fish  would  have 
survived.  There  is  clearly  something  which 
Natural  Selection  cannot  account  for."  As  an 
ultima  ratio  it  is  a  failure.  But  is  it  even  a  law  ? 
Mr.  Wells  writes  of  it  with  the  full-blooded 
confidence  of  the  sciolist.  He  would  write  less 
confidently,  perhaps,  had  he  read  the  "  Essays 
in  Commemoration  of  the  Centenary  of  the  Birth 
of  Charles  Darwin  and  of  the  Fiftieth  Anniversary  . 
of  the  publication  of  The  Origin  of  Species,  edited 
1  Philosophy  of  Tbeism,VoL  II.,  pp.  172, 173; 


"  FROM  MICROBE  TO  MAN  r         9 

for  the  Cambridge  Philosophical  Society  and  the 
Syndics  of  the  University  Press  by  Professor  Se- 
ward,  F.R.S."  Among  the  contributors  to  this 
volume  are  Weismann,  De  Vries,  Bateson,  Francis 
Darwin,  Thiselton  -  Dyer,  Ernst  Haeckel,  and 
other  master-exponents  of  evolution.  And  Mr. 
Wells  may  be  surprised  to  hear  that  the  one 
subject  most  hotly  discussed  by  these  experts 
is — Natural  Selection.  Bateson,  for  instance, 
says :  "  The  time  is  not  ripe  for  the  discussion 
of  the  Origin  of  Species.  .  .  .  We  look  on  the 
manner  and  causation  of  adapted  differentiation 
as  still  wholly  mysterious."1  This,  however, 
was  written  in  1909,  and  things  have  moved  since 
then — but  not  in  the  direction  of  the  theory 
favoured  by  Mr.  Wells.  Mr.  Bourne,  in  his 
Animal  Life  and  Human  Progress,  published  in 
1919,  declares  that  the  popular  hypothesis, 
"  extinction  of  the  less  fit  and  survival  of  the 
fittest,  no  longer  commands  the  universal  assent 
of  zoologist-.  Indeed,  it  has  been  seriously 
undermined  by  the  discoveries  of  recent  years.'-' 
Nevertheless,  it  figures  in  Mr.  Wells's  illustrated 
pages  as  a  doctrine  beyond  dispute,  the  basis  of 
the  drama  "  From  Microbe  to  Man." 

In  the  third  part  of  his  History  Mr. 
says :  "  This  book  is  not  a  theological  book, 
it  is  not  for  us  to  embark  upon  theological 
cussion;  but  it  is  a  part,  a  necessary  and  central 
part,  of  the  history  of  man  to  describe  the  dawn 
and  the  development  of  his  religious  ideas  and 

1  P.  99.  2  P.  56. 


]r.  Wells  \ 
ook,  and  \A 
ncal  dis- 


io  ANCESTOR-WORSHIP 

their  influence  upon  his  activities."3  Mr.  Wells 
is  here  entering  on  a  large  subject — very  much 
larger  than  he  realizes.  Various  theories  have  been 
put  forward  by  anthropologists  to  explain  the 
manner  of  the  making  of  gods  by  primitive 
peoples,  and  of  these  theories  Mr.  Wells  has  the 
misfortune  to  select  the  most  unsatisfactory — 
the  abandoned  theory  of  ancestor- worship.  Of 
this  theory.  Professor  Jastrow,  after  dismissing 
Tylor's  animistic  theory,  says :  "  Still  less  satis- 
factory is  the  theory  chiefly  associated  with  Her- 
bert Spencer,  which  traces  religion  back  to  the 
worship  of  ancestors  under  the  guise  of  ghosts 
as  its  sole  factor.  The  theory  rests  on  the  suppo- 
sition that  the  deities  worshipped  by  primitive 
man  are,  in  reality,  the  spirits  of  his  ancestors."* 
Mr.  Wells  is  apparently  unaware  that  the  theory 
is  chiefly  associated  with  Herbert  Spencer,  for  it 
is  to  that  modern  y£sop,  Grant  Allen,  that  he 
refers  us  for  scientific  informacion  as  to  how  the 
"  Old  Man  "  of  the  tribe,  after  his  death,  became 
a  god.  "  Grant  Allen,"  says  Mr.  Wells  with 
evident  deference,  "  in  his  Evolution  of  the  Idea 
of  God,  laid  stress  chiefly  on  the  posthumous 
worship  of  the  '  Old  Man.'  '  Grant  Allen,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  simply  popularized  Herbert 
Spencer,  and  as  long  ago  as  1913  a  Rationalist 
Press  Association  manual,  treating  of  the  book  to 
which  Mr.  Wells  sends  his  readers,  said  of  Grant 
Allen:  "  His  examples  are  taken  without  regard 
to  the  degree  of  culture  of  the  tribes,  and  it  is 

1  P.  77.  2  The  Study  of  Religion,  p.  184. 


ANCESTOR-WORSHIP  1 1 

generally    recognized    that    he    has     emphasized 
only  one  element  in  the  making  of  gods."1     It 
is    now   generally   recognized    that   what   Grant 
Allen  emphasized  is  not  an  element  in  the  making 
of  gods  at  all.     Grant  Allen  set  out  bravely  "  to 
show  how  in  the  great  Jewish  god  himself  we  may 
discern,    as    in    a    glass,    darkly,    the    vague    but 
constant  lineaments  of  an  ancestral  ghost-deity."5 
Possibly   Mr.    Wells    is    unacquainted   with    the 
exquisite  comedy  of  Huxley  and  Spencer  searching 
the  Scriptures  for  evidences  of  ancestor-worship. 
Huxley's  success  may  be  gauged  by  the  fact  that 
the    most    striking    instances    he  cites  are   "  the 
singular  weight   attached   to   the   veneration   of 
parents  in  the  Fourth  Commandment,"  and  the 
Ark  of  the   Covenant,  which  "  may  have   been 
a  relic  of  ancestor  worship  " — though  how,  pre- 
cisely, he  is  at  a  loss  to  explain.     So  fruitless  was 
his  search  that  he   abandoned  it  in  disgust  and 
took  refuge  in  the  highly  original  theory  that  the 
evidences  of  ancestor-worship  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment must  have  been  deliberately  suppressed  by 
pietistic  copyists  bent  on  bolstering  up  mono- 
theism— presumably   on   the   principle   that   the 
end  justifies  the  means.     Spencer,  having  found 
no  evidence  whatever  of  ghost-worship  amongst 
the   Hebrews,   sententiously   remarks   that   "  the 
silence  of  their  legends  is  but  a  negative  fact, 
which   may   be   as   misleading   as   negative   facts 
usually  are."      Quite  so.     But  nevertheless    we 

1  The  Existence  of  God,  by  Joseph  McCabe,  p.  24. 

2  Tbf  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God,  p.  68. 


12        DISCREDITED  "  AUTHORITIES  r 

may  be  excused  for  not  embracing  a  theory  whose 
only  foundation  is  a  negative  fact — in  other 
words,  the  complete  absence  of  any  evidence 
in  support  of  it. 

To  quote  Grant  Allen  on  this  subject  is  simply 
ludicrous.      To-day  no  reputable  anthropologist 
takes  even  Huxley  or  Spencer  seriously,  much  less 
Grant  Allen.     It  is  so  objectively  unlikely  that 
the  idea  of  a  deathless  god  should  have  evolved 
in  the  savage  mind  out  of  the  idea  of  a  dead  ances- 
tor that  all  serious  anthropologists,  in  the  lack 
of  any  evidence  for  it,  have  abandoned  the  theory. 
The  Supreme  Being  of  the  savage  belonged  to  a 
world  that  knew  no  death — the  ghost  of  a  dead 
man  could  never  enter  there.     Ghosts  and  gods 
were  never  confused  in  the  savage  mind,  however 
much  Huxley,  Spencer,  and  Grant  Allen  may  have 
confused  them.     "  Ghosts,"  says  Crawford  Howell 
Toy,  "  are  shadowy  doubles   of    human  beings, 
sometimes    nameless,   wandering    about   without 
definite    purpose    except    to    procure    food    for 
themselves,    uncertain    of    temper,    friendly    or 
unfriendly,  according  to  caprice  ;"  but  "the  god 
appears  to  have  been  at  the  outset  a  well-fcrmed 
anthropomorphic  being.     His  genesis  is  different 
from  that  of  the  ghost,  spirit,  ancestor,  or  totem."1 
The  present  state  of  expert  opinion  with  regard 
to  'the  theory  advocated  by  Mr.  Wells  is  thus 
voiced  by  Dr.  Jevons :  "  The  '  deified  ancestor  ' 
theory,    however,    would    have    us    believe    that 
there  was  once  a  man  named  Zeus,  who  had  a 
1  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion,  p.  266. 


THE  BUILDING  OF  «  RELIGION"      13 

family,  and  his  descendants  thought  that  he  was  a 
god.  .  .  .  The  fact  is  that  ancestors  known  to 
be  human  were  not  worshipped  as  gods,  and  that 
ancestors  worshipped  as  gods  were  not  believed 
to  have  been  human."1  And,  again,  he  says  quite 
bluntly:  "  Religion  did  not  originate  from  ancestor- 
worship,  nor  ancestor-worship  from  religion."' 
The  Grant  Allen  theory  to-day  is  not  so  much 
as  mentioned  amongst  anthropologists.  Thus, 
though  Mr.  E.  O.  James,  in  his  recent  manual 
of  anthropology,  devotes  a  whole  chapter  to 
"  The  Religion  of  Primeval  Man,"  he  says  never 
a  word  on  the  theory  which  Mr.  Wells  commends 
to  his  readers  with  the  calm  assurance  that  it 
played  an  important  part  in  building  up  "  a 
complex  something "  which  "  we  may  call 
religion"3  Mr.  Wells  declares  that  in  the  com- 
pilation of  his  History  he  has  consulted  many 
experts;  but  experts  in  the  study  of  religion  do 
not  seem  to  have  been  amongst  the  number. 
Instead  of  betaking  himself  to  Grant  Allen,  he 
might  with  profit  have  dipped  into  the  pages  of 
Toy,  or  Jevons,  or  Jastrow,  and  taken  to  heart 
the  latter's  warning  anent  theorists  "  with  a 
decided  prejudice  against  religion,  which  dis- 
qualifies them  from  judging  religious  phenomena 
calmly  and  dispassionately."4 

A  careful  investigation  of  the  available  material 
for  the  study  of  the  history  of  religion  has  led  many 

1  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion,  p.  302. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  197.  3  P.  77. 
4  The  Study  of  Religion,  p,  181. 


i4  W ELLS' S  SHORT  CUTS 

capable  enquirers  to  conclude  that  the  idea  of 
God  did  not  "  evolve  "  at  all,  but  was  gathered, 
quite  naturally,  even  by  primitive  man,  from  a 
consideration  of  the  phenomena  of  nature  around 
him.  Surely  the  intelligence  with  which  the 
Grant  Allen  school  insist  on  endowing  primitive 
man— -an  intelligence  sufficient  to  work  out  a 
belief  in  a  beneficent  Supreme  Being  from  ghosts 
of  doubtful  character — would  have  been  more 
than  sufficient  to  enable  the  savage  to  discern 
a  mover  behind  the  bolt  from  the  blue  as  readily 
as  behind  the  arrow  in  its  flight. 

In  his  chronicles  of  civilized  man,  one  hardly 
expects  from  Mr.  Wells  the  detail  of  a  Froissart. 
The  latter's  voluminous  chronicles  cover  barely 
eighty  years,  whereas  whole  millenniums  are 
generously  spanned  in  single  parts  of  the  Outline. 
This  method  of  writing  history  has  its  disadvan- 
tages, since  it  involves  looking  at  events  through 
the  wrong  end  of  the  telescope.  It  is,  therefore, 
not  surprising  if  Mr.  Wells's  ornate  thumb-nail 
sketches  occasionally  bear  little  resemblance  to 
the  spacious  scenes  they  purport  to  represent. 
This  is  a  fault  common  to  all  bird's-eye  views  of 
history,  but  to  it  Mr.  Wells  adds  a  peculiar  vice 
of  his  own.  His  history  is  purposive,  designed 
to  show  "  that  men  form  one  universal  brother- 
hood, that  they  spring  from  one  common  origin, 
that  their  individual  lives,  their  nations  and 
races,  interbreed  and  blend  and  go  on  to  merge 
again  at  last  in  one  common  human  destiny  upon 
this  little  planet  amidst  the  stars."  Where  the 


HISTORT  FOR  DEMOCRATS         15 

ordinary  historian  is  content  with  classification, 
Mr.  Wells,  in  the  light  of  his  guiding  principle, 
insists  on  unification.  His  is  a  history  for  demo- 
crats by  a  democrat.  No  one  is  allowed  to  appear 
unique  in  it.  All  great  historic  personages  are 
speedily  reduced  to  their  least  common  deno- 
minator, and  Athens,  aristocrat  of  cities,  is  de- 
clared to  have  had  "  very  much  the  atmosphere 
of  the  lower  sort  of  contemporary  music-hall." 
His  study  of  religions  is  designed  chiefly  to  show 
that  the  essential  differences  between  Gautama, 
Confucius,  Mahommed,  and  Christ,  are  really 
not  worth  writing  about.  Small  wonder,  then, 
if  Mr.  Wells  applies  the  levelling-down  process 
to  Moses,  David,  and  Solomon. 

The  story  of  "  The  Hebrew  Scripture  and  the 
Prophets  "  is  told  in  fourteen  teeming  pages, 
to  which  Mr.  Wells  prefixes  this  significant  note : 
"  The  Encyclopaedia  Biblica  has  been  of  great  use 
here."  This  work,  on  which  Mr.  Wells  relies 
so  confidently,  is  advertised  to-day  by  Messrs. 
Watts  and  Co.  as  "  The  Work  for  all  Rationa- 
lists," and  is  offered,  brand  new,  to  all  and  sundry, 
for  just  half  the  price  at  which  it  was  originally 
published.  It  is  chiefly  valuable  as  exemplifying 
the  views  held  by  the  extreme  left  wing  of  Biblical 
critics  some  twenty  years  ago.  Yet  this  is  the 
fons  et  origo  of  the  study  in  the  Scriptures  with 
which  Mr.  Wells  presents  the  masses.  He  is 
nothing  if  not  versatile,  and  in  the  sixth  part  of 
his  History  he  adopts  quite  the  tone  and  style  of 
the  higher  critic.  For  instance,  he  tells  us  that 


16     WELLS  AND  THE  EARLY  SEMITES 

"  there  is  much  about  the  story  of  Moses  that 
has  a  mythical  flavour,  and  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able incidents  in  it,  his  concealment  by  his  mother 
in  an  ark  of  bulrushes,  has  also  been  found  in  an 
ancient  Sumerian  inscription  made  at  least  a 
thousand  years  before  his  time  by  that  Sargon  I. 
who  founded  the  ancient  Akkadian-Sumerian 
Empire."1  Mr.  Wells  then  gives  a  translation 
of  the  inscription,  and  rounds  off  the  story  with 
the  comment,  "  This  is  perplexing."  It  is,  but 
Mr.  Wells  himself  has  introduced  the  perplexity. 
Let  us  look  at  the  known  facts.  The  inscription 
quoted  by  Mr.  Wells  is  not  Sumerian  at  all.  It 
occurs  in  an  omen-tablet,  which  is  admitted  by 
all  experts  to  be  Neo-Babylonian,  and  therefore 
certainly  after  the  time  of  Moses.  Canon  Driver, 
for  instance,  in  his  commentary  on  Exodus,2 
assigns  it  to  the  eighth  century  B.C.  But  that  is 
not  all.  Professor  Leonard  W.  King,  Assistant 
Keeper  of  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  Antiquities 
in  the  British  Museum,  and  Professor  of  Assyrian 
and  Babylonian  Archaeology  in  the  University 
of  London,  has  recently  discovered  the  chronicle 
from  which  the  inscription  on  the  omen-tablet 
was  compiled.  Writing  in  1916,  he  says :  "  Finally, 
the  recent  discovery  of  a  copy  of  the  original 
chronicle,  from  which  the  historical  references 
in  the  omen-tablet  were  taken,  restored  the 
traditions  to  their  true  setting  and  freed  them 
from  the  augural  text  into  which  they  had  been 

1  P.  164.  2  P.  12. 


UNWARRANTED  INFERENCE        17 

incorporated."1  Unfortunately  for  Mr.  Wells, 
in  all  that  is  extant  of  this  Semite  (not  Sumerian) 
chronicle  there  is  no  mention  whatsoever  of  the 
vital  incident  stressed  by  him — the  story  of 
Sargon's  being  abandoned  by  his  mother  to  the 
river  in  a  basket  of  reeds.2  So  much  for  the  facts. 
But  the  higher  critic  is  frequently  more  con- 
cerned about  theories  than  about  facts,  and  gives 
us  to  understand  that,  though  his  facts  may  be 
wrong,  his  theories  must  be  right.  Now  it  is 
more  particularly  against  Mr.  Wells's  theory  and 
method  that  we  wish  to  protest.  Were:  the 
incident  of  Sargon's  exposure  exactly  as  set  forth 
by  Mr.  Wells,  it  would  nevertheless  not  be  safe 
to  conclude  that  the  Hebrews  must  have  bor- 
rowed from  the  Babylonians.  It  is  precisely  this 
sort  of  unwarranted  inference  that  has  brought  the 
study  of  comparative  religion,  as  practised  by  the 
rationalist  school,  into  disrepute.  The  compara- 
tive method  has  its  uses,  but,  as  Professor  Rhys 
Davids  remarks,  it  "will  be  of  worse  than  no  service 
if  we  imagine  that  likeness  is  any  proof  of  direct 
relationship,  that  similarity  of  ideas  in  different 
countries  shows  that  either  the  one  or  the  other 
was  necessarily  a  borrower.  ...  It  would,  of 
course,  be  going  too  far  to  deny  that  coincidences 
of  belief  are  occasionally  produced  by  actual 
contact  of  mind  with  mind;  but  it  is  no  more 
necessary  to  assume  that  they  always  are  so,  than 

1  A  History  of  Sumer  and  Akkad,  p.  220. 

2  Chronicles  concerning  Early  Babylonian  Kings,  by  Professor 
L.  W.  King,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  27  if. 


1 8    WELLS  AND  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT 

to  assume  that  chalk  cliffs,  if  there  be  such,  in 
China,  are  produced  by  chalk  cliffs  in  the  Downs 
of  Sussex.  They  have  no  connection  one  with 
another,  except  that  both  are  the  result  of  similar 
causes.  Yet  this  manner  of  reasoning  is  constantly 
found,  not  only  through  the  whole  range  of  the 
literature  of  the  subject  from  classical  times  down- 
wards, but  even  in  the  works  of  the  present  day."] 

It  is  the  manner  of  reasoning  adopted  by  Mr. 
Wells,  not  only  with  regard  to  the  historical 
records  of  the  Old  Testament,  but,  as  we  shall 
see,  even  with  regard  to  Christian  origins. 

The  psycho-analyst  would  say  that  Mr.  Wells 
must  have  suffered,  as  a  boy,  from  an  overdose 
of  the  righteousness  of  David  and  Solomon,  so 
vigorously  does  he  react  at  the  mere  mention  of 
their  names.  They  are  the  real  villains  of  this 
Outline,  and  Mr.  Wells  exercises  his  author's  privi- 
lege of  abusing  them  roundly.  He  would  be  more 
convincing  were  he  less  reckless  in  the  things  he 
says  about  them.  For  instance,  the  finishing 
touches  he  adds  to  the  picture  of  David  as  a 
scheming  adventurer  are  more  artistic  than 
accurate:  "He  married  Michal,  the  daughter 
of  Saul,  but  there  was  no  love  between  them. 
The  marriage  was  an  attempt  to  legitimate  his 
position.  She  haxed  and  insulted  him — he  had 

1  The  Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion.,  as  illustrated  by  some 
points  in  the  history  of  Indian  Buddhism  (pp.  3,  4).  So  also 
M.  Cumont :  "  Resemblances  do  not  necessarily  imply  imitation. 
Similarities  of  ideas  or  practices  ought  to  be  explained,  without 
any  reference  to  borrowing,  by  community  of  origin  "  (Les 
Religions  Orientates,  p.  13). 


THE  CASE  OF  DAVID  19 

hung  her  sons — and  kept  her  a  close  captive 
(2  Sam.  vi.)."1  Now  the  Bible  says:  "  And 
Michal,  Saul's  daughter,  loved  David"  (i  Sam. 
xviii.  20);  and  again,  "  Saul  saw  and  knew  that  the 
Lord  was  with  David,  and  that  Michal,  Saul's 
daughter,  loved  him  "  (i  Sam.  xviii.  28).  More- 
over, according  to  the  very  chapter  of  the  Second 
Book  of  Samuel  cited  by  Mr.  Wells,  "  Michal,  the 
daughter  of  Saul,  had  no  child  unto  the  day  of 
her  death."  Clearly,  then,  David  could  not  have 
hanged  her  sons.  It  is  Mr.  Wells's  exegesis  that 
is  at  fault.  He  has  misunderstood  2  Sam. 
xxi.  8,  in  which  we  read  of  "  the  five  sons  of 
Michal,  the  daughter  of  Saul,  whom  she  brought 
up  for  Adriel."  Though  she  brought  them  up 
for  Adriel,  they  were  not  her  sons,  but  the  sons 
of  Merob,  the  wife  of  Adriel.  They  are  called 
the  sons  of  Michal  because  she  adopted  them 
and  brought  them  up  as  her  own.  (See  note  to 
2  Kings  xxi.  8,  in  the  Douay  Version.)  Further- 
more, there  is  nothing  whatever  in  the  chapter 
cited  by  Mr.  Wells,  or  in  any  other,  as  to  David's 
keeping  her  a  close  captive.  We  know  not  to 
what  private  sources  of  information  Mr.  Wells 
may  have  had  access,  but  statements  so  mani- 
festly at  variance  with  all  historical  record  need 
some  confirmation. 

His  estimate  of  the  influence  of  the  Babylonians 

on  the  Jews  is  thus  briefly  summarized:  "The 

plain  fact  of  the  Bible  narrative  is  that  the  Jews 

went  to  Babylon  barbarians  and  came  back  civi- 

1  P.  169. 


20          WELLS  AS  HIGHER  CRITIC 

lized  .  .  .  they  returned  with  most  of  their 
material  for  the  Old  Testament."1  One  can 
only  rub  one's  eyes  and  wonder  if  Mr.  Wells 
has  any  idea  of  what  is  generally  admitted  to  be 
pre-exilic  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  list  of 
such  writings  is  a  fairly  formidable  one.  In  the 
Hexateuch,  the  Jahvist  and  Elohist  documents, 
the  Deuteronomist,  Josue,  and  the  bulk  of  the 
legislative  matter  in  the  Pentateuch;  Judges, 
Ruth,  Jeremias,  Samuel,  and  Kings;  the  Proto- 
Isaias,  Amos,  Osee,  Micheas,  Joel,  Jonas,  Nahun, 
and  most  of  Sophonias;  and,  in  addition,  three- 
quarters  of  the  Book  of  Psalms  and  the  Book  of 
Proverbs,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Canticle  of  Canti- 
cles. Even  supposing  that  some  or  all  of  these 
were  re-edited  after  the  exile,  it  is  surely  grotesque 
to  represent  the  Hebrews  as  returning  from 
Babylon  with  the  bare  materials  for  the  Old 
Testament.  That  "  some  of  the  later  books  are 
frankly  post  -  captivity  compositions  "2  hardly 
justifies  Mr.  Wells' s  wild  flight  of  fancy  about 
the  rest.  Nor  is  he  any  more  accurate  in  de- 
scribing the  leading  ideas  of  these  books.  He  says : 
"  There  was  the  belief  first  of  all  that  Jehovah 
was  the  greatest  and  most  powerful  of  tribal 
gods,  and  then  that  he  was  a  god  above  all  other 
gods,  and  at  last  that  he  was  the  only  true  god."c 
Very  skilfully  Mr.  Wells  manages  to  convey  the 
idea  that  monotheism  amongst  the  Jews  was  the 
product  of  evolution.  We  seem  to  detect  faint 
echoes  of  Grant  Allen :  "  The  only  people  who 
*  P.  173.  2  P.  173.  a  P.  173. 


THE  JEWISH  IDEA  OF  GOD          21 

ever  invented  a  pure  monotheism  at  first  hand 
were  the  Jews.  ...  It  is  the  peculiar  glory  of 
Israel  to  have  evolved  God."1  But  where  in 
the  whole  range  of  the  Old  Testament  is  there  the 
slightest  evidence  that  the  Jews,  as  a  people, 
were  ever  anything  but  monotheists  ?  The 
view  that  religion  was  at  first  monotheistic  and 
degenerated  into  polytheism  is  still  more  widely 
held  than  any  rival  opinion,  because,  as  Andrew 
Lang  remarked,  "  it  may  be  an  old  theory,  but 
facts  '  winna  ding,'  and  are  on  the  side  of  an 
old  theory."  Mr.  Wells,  with  showman's  ges- 
ture, represents  the  god  of  the  Jews  as  a  purely 
tribal  or  national  deity,  but  the  pre-exilic  Book  of 
Amos  represents  Him,  not  only  as  the  God  who 
brought  Israel  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  but  also 
as  the  God  who  brought  the  Philistines,  the  mortal 
enemies  of  the  Jews,  out  of  Caphtor,  and  the 
Syrians  out  of  Kir  (Amos  ix.  7).  Mr.  Wells 
might  have  given  us  an  explanatory  footnote 
with  regard  to  this  passage,  for  on  his  theory 
it  has  urgent  need  of  elucidation.  Also  we 
would  like  to  know  how,  on  his  evolutionary 
hypothesis,  he  explains  the  fact  that,  though 
the  Jews  were  so  susceptible  to  Babylonian 
influence,  they  reacted  against  the  religion  of 
their  masters  in  general  culture.  Here  is  a  race 
of  barbarians  with  a  tribal  god,  who  after  sojourn- 
ing for  some  seventy  years  in  Babylon,  absorbing 
culture  at  every  pore,  emerge,  not  astral  poly- 
theists  like  their  masters,  but  confirmed  mono- 
1  The  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God,  p.  68. 


22      EVOLUTION  OF  MONOTHEISM 

theists.  The  evolution  of  monotheism  in  such 
circumstances  seems  to  us  a  greater  miracle 
than  any  that  Mr.  Wells  rejects.  Considering 
the  psychology  of  the  Jewish  race,  their  intense 
nationalism,  their  marked  conservatism — not  to 
say  obstinacy — even  from  a  purely  naturalistic 
standpoint,  it  is  much  more  probable  that  the 
Jews  came  out  of  captivity  pure  monotheists  for 
the  exceedingly  simple  reason  that  they  were 
pure  monotheists  when  they  entered  it.  This, 
too,  is  thoroughly  in  keeping  with  the  portrait 
of  the  Jew  given  by  Mr.  Wells  some  two  hundred 
pages  farther  on :  "  He  remained  obstinately 
monotheistic;  he  would  have  none  other  gods 
but  the  one  true  God.  In  Rome,  as  in  Jerusalem, 
he  stood  out  manfully  against  the  worship  of 
any  god-Caesar.  And  to  the  best  of  his  ability 
he  held  to  his  covenants  with  his  God.  No 
graven  images  could  enter  Jerusalem;  even  the 
Roman  standards  with  their  eagles  had  to  stay 
outside."1  An  impartial  student  would  be  led 
to  suspect  that  what  the  Jew  was  in  Rome  and 
Jerusalem,  he  was  also  in  Babylon,  especially  as 
his  conservatism  was  no  new  trait  in  his  character. 
In  Exodus  and  Deuteronomy  the  Jews  are  de- 
scribed as  a  "  stiff-necked  people,"  and  the  psy- 
chologist has  every  reason  to  judge  that,  had  they 
been  anything  but  monotheistic  to  begin  with, 
they  would,  humanly  speaking,  have  remained 
so  to  the  end. 
We  will  now  pass  on  to  "  The  Beginning, 

1  P.  355- 


THE  PAULINE  THEORY  ONCE  MORE  23 

the  Rise,  and  the  Divisions  of  Christianity " 
(Part  XII.),  since  Mr.  Wells  himself  ^  links 
up  this  part  of  his  Outline  with  the  history 
of  the  Hebrews.1  Here  we  must  confess 
to  a  feeling  of  disappointment  that  a  man 
of  Mr.  Wells's  undoubted  ability  should 
rest  content  with  the  tattered  theory  of  the 
Pauline  origin  of  Christianity:  Paul  gave  to 
the  "  Nazarenes "  the  beginnings  of  a  creed; 
the  "  Nazarene  "  himself  was  "  the  seed  rather 
than  the  founder  of  Christianity."2  We  had 
all  this  ad  nauseam  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago. 
Mr.  Wells  has  evidently  not  kept  pace  with  the 
rationalist  movement.  Nowadays,  the  fact  that 
Christ  was  a  teacher  with  a  definite  creed  to 
which  He  called  upon  all  to  subscribe  is  made  the 
basis  of  a  charge  of  intolerance  against  the  "  Naza- 
rene." The  mere  fact  that  the  commonest 
expression  on  the  lips  of  Christ  is  "  Amen,  amen, 
I  say  unto  you  " — an  expression  occurring  some 
seventy  times  in  the  Gospels — is  in  itself  sufficient 
to  dispose  of  the  idea  that  Christ  did  not  regard 
Himself  as  a  teacher  and  a  founder.  Mr.  Wells 
seems  to  think  that  the  religion  of  Christ  is  com- 
prised in  the  Eight  Beatitudes.  He  has  forgotten 
that  it  was  the  same  Christ  who  said,  "  Unless  a 
man  be  born  again  of  water  and  the  Holy  Ghost 
he  cannot  enter  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven"; 
"  Except  you  eat  the  flesh  of  the  Son  of  man  and 
drink  his  blood,  you  shall  not  have  life  in  you  "; 
and  "  If  he  will  not  hear  the  church,  let  him  be 

1  P.  353-  3  P.  355- 


24  MR.  G.  K.  CHESTERTON 

to  thee  as  the  heathen  and  the  publican."  This 
fanciful  theory  of  the  Pauline  origin  of  Chris- 
tianity falls  to  pieces  before  the  robust  common 
sense  of  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton,  who  says  of 
Mr.  Wells:  "Thus  he  seems  almost  to  revive  the 
suggestion  of  Renan:  that  St.  Paul  founded  the 
Church  that  was  really  obeyed  too  much,  while 
Christ  only  imagined  the  religion  that  was  never 
obeyed  enough.  This  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  is 
consistent  with  everything  except  the  facts.  It 
might  be  the  relation  between  a  prophet  and  an 
apostle;  but  it  was  certainly  not  the  relation 
between  that  prophet  and  that  apostle.  I  could 
understand  a  man  saying  that  the  Paul  of  the 
Epistles  was  a  bumptious,  bad-tempered,  and 
meddlesome  bishop,  wanting  too  much  to  boss 
everything  or  speed  up  everything.  But  the 
same  realistic  approach  will  make  it  perfectly 
plain  that  he  is  certainly  not  a  person  professing 
to  found  anything.  He  has  not  the  tone  of  a 
lawgiver  even  like  Mahomet  or  Moses,  far  less 
like  Christ.  He  first  persecuted  the  Church  of 
God ;  but  there  was  a  Church  for  him  to  persecute. 
Possibly  he  afterwards  pestered  the  Church  of 
God;  but  there  was  a  Church  for  him  to  pester. 
He  had  not  made  it,  and  never  for  one  instant 
did  he  really  talk  as  if  he  had.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  can  understand  a  man,  an  atheist  or  any 
anti-religionist,  saying  that  Christ  was  a  myth, 
or  was  a  maniac,  or  was  a  liar  and  deceiver  of  the 
people.  But  I  cannot  understand  any  man 
arguing  from  the  Gospel  accounts  and  denying 


AND  THE  WELLSIAN  THEORY      25 

that  Christ  did  talk  as  if  he  was  founding  some- 
thing. He  did  talk  like  a  lawgiver,  like  an  origin ; 
not  like  a  man  belonging  to  something,  but  one 
making  something  for  other  people  to  belong  to. 
We  may  belong  to  it  or  not,  we  may  believe  a 
word  of  it  or  not,  we  may  like  it  or  tolerate  it  or 
not,  but  that  is  the  critical  fact  about  the  records 
as  they  stand;  he  most  certainly  did,  according 
to  those  records,  speak  as  one  having  authority 
and  not  as  the  scribes. "] 

It  is  Mr.  Wells's  desire  for  unification  that  leads 
him  to  adopt  such  a  theory.  He  is  determined 
to  demonstrate  that  there  is  nothing  unique  about 
Christianity,  and  no  theory  is  too  absurd  if  it 
will  only  reduce  Christ  to  the  level  of  the  founders 
of  other  "  universal  religions."  Every  bead  must 
be  made  to  fit  the  string  on  which  Mr.  Wells 
has  determined  to  thread  it. 

One  imagines  that  Dr.  Bosanquet  and  Mr. 
Joseph  wrould  not  be  so  anxious  to  banish  the 
syllogism  from  our  midst  after  a  course  of  Mr. 
Wells's  non-syllogistic  reasoning.  It  allows  of 
an  easy  and  graceful  transition  from  the  possible 
to  the  actual  order.  "  It  may  be  that  the  early 
parts  of  the  Gospels  are  accretions,"  he  tells  us. 
He  has  decided  weakness  for  maybes,  which  are 
generally  presented  with  such  a  wealth  of  detail 
that  the  average  reader  comes  to  regard  them  as 
facts.2  But,  as  a  distinguished  rationalist  has 

1  The  New  Witness,  July  16,  p.  209. 

2  Mr.  Belloc  has  cleverly  emphasized  this  characteristic  in 
the  Dublin  Review,  April-May-June,  "  A   Few   Words   with 
Mr.  Wells." 


26  CHRISTIAN  ORIGINS 

pointed  out,  "  anything  which  does  not  involve 
a  positive  contradiction  in  terms  may  be.  But 
maybes  are  not  honey  bees  /"  Also  Mr.  Wells 
needs  reminding  that  things  are  not  always 
what  they  seem.  During  the  first  two  centuries 
of  the  Christian  era,  he  says,  "  a  considerable 
amount  of  a  sort  of  theocrasia  seems  to  have  gone 
on  between  the  Christian  cult  and  the  almost 
equally  popular  and  widely  diffused  Mithraic 
cult  and  the  cult  of  Serapis-Isis-Horus."1  This 
seems  so  to  Mr.  Wells  because  of  a  few  superficial 
similarities  in  the  three  cults.  As  we  have 
pointed  out,  he  is  apparently  quite  convinced 
that  similarity  of  any  kind  in  religious  rites  is  a 
proof  of  common  origin.  A  wider  acquaintance 
with  the  history  of  religions  would  make  him  a 
little  chary  of  that  principle.  The  vestiges  of 
Mithraism  which  he  discerns  in  Christianity 
are  faint  indeed.  The  substitution  of  Sunday 
for  the  Jewish  Sabbath  is  one.  It  apparently  has 
not  occurred  to  Mr.  Wells  that  this  change  was 
made  by  the  Christians  in  honour  of  Christ's 
Resurrection,  which  took  place  on  the  first  day 
of  the  week.  Mithraic  are  "  probably  also  those 
ideas  and  phrases  so  distinctive  of  certain  sects 
to  this  day,  about  being  '  washed  in  the  blood  ' 
of  Christ,  and  of  Christ  being  a  blood  sacrifice. 
For  we  have  to  remember  that  a  death  by  cruci- 
fixion is  hardly  a  more  bloody  death  than  hanging : 
to  speak  of  Jesus  shedding  His  Blood  for  mankind 
is  really  a  most  inaccurate  expression.'5'  Death 
1  P.  368.  2  P.  368. 


MITHRAISM 


by  crucifixion,  in  the  ordinary  way,  may  not  have 
been  bloody,  but  Christ's  death  certainly  was. 
One  would  imagine  that  Mr.  Wells  had  never 
heard  of  the  scourging  at  the  pillar,  the  crowning 
with  thorns,  and  the  piercing  of  Christ's  side  with 
a  lance.  And  what  sense  is  there  in  looking  to 
Mithraism  for  the  origin  of  a  phraseology  which 
is  manifestly  a  modification  of  that  of  the  Old 
Testament  ?  M.  Cumont,  the  greatest  authority 
on  the  Taurobolium,  long  ago  rejected  the  theory 
of  which  Mr.  Wells  now  gives  us  a  rechauffe,  and 
showed  that,  so  far  from  Christianity  having 
adopted  the  ideas  and  phraseology  of  Mithraism, 
it  was  the  other  way  about :  "  On  the  contrary, 
from  the  time  when  Christianity  became  a  moral 
power  in  the  world,  it  imposed  itself  even  on  its 
enemies.  The  Phrygian  priests  of  the  Great 
Mother  opposed  their  feasts  of  the  spring  equinox 
to  the  Christian  Easter,  and  attributed  to  the  blood 
spilt  in  the  Taurobolium  the  redeeming  power  of 
the  Blood  of  the  Lamb."1  According  to  the 
same  authority,  pagan  mysteries  were  deliberately 
approximated  to  Christian  rites.  It  was  claimed 
for  the  Mithraic  baptism  of  blood  that  it  was 
more  efficacious  than  the  Christian  baptism  of 
water,  and  the  Mother  of  the  gods  was  likened 
to  the  Mother  of  God.2  Mr.  Wells  lays  some 
emphasis  on  what  he  considers  to  be  contributions 
of  the  Alexandrine  cult  to  Christian  thought 
and  practice:  "In  the  personality  of  Horus, 

1  Religions  Orientales,  p.  II. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  86.     See  also  his  Mysteres  de  Mitkra,  I.,  p.  341. 

3* 


75/5  WORSHIP 


who  was  at  once  the  son  of  Serapis  and  identical 
with  Serapis,  it  was  natural  for  the  Christians 
to  find  an  illuminating  analogue  in  their  struggles 
with  the  Pauline  mysteries.  From  that  to  the 
identification  of  Mary  with  Isis,  and  her  elevation 
to  a  rank  quasi-divine  .  .  .  was  also  a  very 
natural  step."1 

Now  Isis  herself  has  been  identified  with  Mi- 
nerva, Venus,  Diana,  Proserpina,  Ceres,  Juno, 
Bellona,  Hecate,  and  Rhamnasia.2  Where  is  all 
this  identification  going  to  end  ?  Mr.  Wells 
gives  the  reader  to  understand  that  it  was  the 
early  Christians  who  identified  Mary  with  Isis, 
whereas  the  "  identification  "  is  in  reality  sheer 
speculation  on  the  part  of  modern  theorists. 
From  Apuleius  we  know  how  the  highest  attri- 
butes of  every  known  deity  were  predicated  of 
Isis,  so  that  it  is  no  difficult  matter  to  find  points 
of  resemblance  between  her  and  the  Queen  of 
Heaven.  The  differences  between  the  two — 
though  far  more  striking  and  far  more  significant 
in  view  of  the  syncretism  that  went  on  in  the 
cult  of  Isis — are  calmly  ignored  by  the  upholders 
of  identity.  Isis,  like  Osiris,  was  originally  a 
beast,  and  therefore  retains  the  heifer's  horns  as 
a  symbol  of  her  primitive  nature;  she  was  wife  to 
her  own  brother;  her  priests  were  healers,  wizards, 
and  exorcists;  all  manner  of  excesses  were  con- 
nected with  her  worship,  and  yet  we  are  asked  to 
believe  that  the  early  Christians  confused  her 
with  the  Mother  of  Jesus.  There  is  hardly  a 
1  P.  368.  2  The  Golden  Ass,  xi.,  c.  5. 


AND  MORE  IDENTIFICATIONS       29 

pagan  goddess  with  whom  Mary  has  not  been  at 
one  time  or  another  "  identified,"  and  in  selecting 
Isis  Mr.  Wells  is  somewhat  out  of  date.  If 
he  wants  to  keep  abreast  of  "  modern  thought/5 
he  must  identify  Mary  with  Virgo  of  the  Zodiac  ! 
The  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  this  kind  of  thing 
has  been  reached  by  an  advanced  scholar1  who 
"  appeals,  in  support  of  his  contention,  to  the 
representation  on  the  side-door  of  Notre  Dame 
in  Paris,  where  (he  says)  Virgo  is  omitted  among 
the  signs  of  the  Zodiac  because  she  is  identified 
with  Mary  !"2  The  analogue  alluded  to  by  Mr. 
Wells  is  very  far  from  "  illuminating."  Salomon 
Reinach  speaks  of  the  "  inextricable  confusion  " 
of  Egyptian  mythology,3  and  adds :  "  Hieroglyphic 
inscriptions  and  papyri  reveal  the  details  of  the 
ritual,  more  especially  that  of  the  dead;  but  the 
myths  of  the  gods  elude  us  for  the  most  part, 
and  the  only  one  familiar  to  us,  that  of  Osiris, 
was  preserved  by  a  Greek  author.""  It  is  in  this 
elusive  mythology  that  Mr.  Wells  seeks  for  Chris- 
tian origins.  As  for  Serapis,  he  was  a  Grseco- 
Asiatic  deity,  analogous  to  Pluto  and  identified 
with  Osiris,  who  was  introduced  by  the  Ptolemies 
to  Alexandria  at  the  beginning  of  the  Hellenic 
domination.  In  what  sense  his  son  Horus  was 
"  identical  with  Serapis  "  Mr.  Wells  unfortunately 
does  not  explain,  and  we  are  at  a  loss  to  discover. 

1  Jeremias  in  his  Babylonisches,  p.  35. 

2  Primitive    Christianity    and    its    Non-Jewish    Sources^  by 
Professor  Carl  Clemen,  translated  by  Robert  E.  Nisbet,  p.  304. 

3  Orpheus,  p.  27.  4  Ibid.,  p.  31. 


30  PFLEIDERER'S  THEORIES 

He  has,  in  fact,  merely  revived  the  comparative 
method  of  Pfleiderer,  which  is  thus  commented 
on  in  the  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics  : 
"  The  comparisons  which  Pfleiderer  so  indus- 
triously makes  exaggerate  the  resemblances  and 
ignore  the  differences  between  Christian  ideas 
and  the  myths  and  legends  of  other  religions, 
besides  making  the  curious  assumption,  that  if 
any  similarity,  however  remote,  can  be  suggested 
between  a  myth  or  legend  and  what  claims  to  be 
a  fact  of  Christian  history,  the  fact  cannot  be  a 
fact,  but  must  be  a  fiction."1  It  will  be  found, 
on  investigation,  that  the  parallels  cited  by  Mr. 
Wells  are  of  the  vaguest  description.  Far  closer 
parallels  are  not  regarded  as  indicating  the  kind 
of  religious  exchange  which  Mr.  Wells  seems 
to  think  must  have  taken  place.  To  take  an 
instance :  "  The  Greeks,"  says  Reinach,  "  were 
struck  by  the  similarity  of  the  legend  of  Osiris 
and  that  of  Dionysos  Zagreus,  the  young  bull 
devoured  by  the  Titans,  to  which  Zeus  granted 
a  new  and  glorious  life.  These  legends,  both 
based  upon  sacrificial  rites,  coincide  without 
having  presumably  borrowed  one  from  another."' 
The  kind  of  thing  that  passed  muster  when 
Pfleiderer  wrote  his  Early  Christian  Concept  of 
Christ  will  not  pass  muster  now — there  must 
be  at  least  some  evidence  of  the  borrowing.  For 
the  theory  of  loan-gods,  once  so  popular  with 
anthropologists,  is  pretty  generally  recognized  as 
being  beset  with  many  pitfalls  for  the  unwary. 

1  Vol.  III.,  p.  582,  col.  2.  2  Orpheus,  p.  31. 


WELLS  AND  SABELLIANISM        31 

Yet  Mr.  Wells  must  find  origins  somewhere  other 
than  in  the  Gospels,  which  he  thus  rules  out  of 
court:  "  Now  it  is  a  matter  of  fact  that  in  the 
Gospels  all  that  body  of  theological  assertion 
which  constitutes  Christianity  finds  little  sup- 
port.5'1 It  seems  to  us  that  this  is  rather  a  matter 
of  prejudice,  and  is  the  cause  of  Mr.  Wells's 
excursions  from  the  field  of  fact  into  the  more 
congenial  realm  of  myth.  One  becomes  a  little 
doubtful  of  Mr.  Wells's  matters  of  fact  when  we 
find  him  calmly  recording  that  "  the  Sabellians 
taught  practically  that  there  were  three  equal 
Gods,  God  the  Father,  God  the  Son  (with  whom 
Jesus  was  identified),  and  God  the  Holy  Ghost."2 
This  is  a  little  hard  on  the  Sabellians,  seeing  that 
they  went  astray  with  regard  to  the  Persons  of 
the  Trinity  through  over-emphasizing  the  unity 
of  God,  and  protested  vigorously  against  the 
current  Platonic  speculation  about  the  Trinity 
lest  it  should  foster  the  notion  that  there  was  a 
plurality  of  Gods.8  Mr.  Wells's  account  of  the 
Sabellians  is  hardly  calculated  to  inspire  con- 
fidence in  his  handling  of  matters  theological. 

Nor  is  he  any  more  at  home  in  the  history  of 
philosophy.  Writing  of  the  mediaeval  period, 
he  says :  "  It  may  not  surprise  the  reader  to  learn 
that  the  philosophy  of  the  Catholic  Church  was 
essentially  a  Realist  philosophy."4  This,  however, 
surprises  not  only  the  reader,  but  also  Mr.  Ernest 

1  P.  358.  2  P.  370. 

3  "  Ne   videantur   decs   dicere  ":    Origen,   "On    Titus," 
Frag.  II.  *  P.  510. 


32          WELLS  AND  PHILOSOPHY 

Barker,  who  appends  this  footnote  to  Mr.  Wells's 
text:  "  Nor  is  it  true  that  Realism  was  the  philo- 
sophy of  the  Church.  It  was,  in  the  early  Middle 
Ages;  but,  after  Occam  (1330),  Nominalism 
triumphed  and  was  the  philosophy  of  the  Church 
till  the  Reformation.  Luther  denounced 
Nominalism."3  The  plain  fact  of  the  matter  is 
that  the  "  Church  "  never  had  a  "  philosophy  " 
as  such.  Followers  of  Occam  did  not  constitute 
the  Church,  and  the  most  celebrated  of  them, 
Buridan,  was  prohibited  from  teaching  and 
condemned.  With  equal  justice,  the  views  of 
opponents  of  Occam,  such  as  Thomas  of  Stras- 
bourg and  Raymond  of  Sabunde,  might  be  de- 
scribed as  the  philosophy  of  the  Church.  In  any 
case,  Occam's  Nominalism  was  not  as  Mr.  Wells 
conceives  it,  but  the  niceties  of  the  matter  perhaps 
do  not  appeal  to  him.  Occam,  however,  is  best 
described  as  "  a  conceptualist  who  uses  the  lan- 
guage of  Nominalism  " — a  Terminist  who  held 
that  the  term,  as  it  exists  mentally  (not  in  speech 
or  in  writing),  is  alone  universal.  Mr.  Wells's 
account  of  Nominalism  is  somewhat  rough  and 
ready,  but  his  account  of  Realism  is  misleading. 
Thus,  "  the  Realist  outdid  the  vulgar  tendency 
to  exaggerate  the  significance  of  class."2  "  Class  " 
is  a  word  which  conveys  a  totally  false  impression 
when  used  in  connection  with  Scholasticism.  It 
connotes  a  definitely  positivist  outlook  which, 
however  familiar  to  Mr.  Wells,  was  not  that  of 
the  Realists.  The  Scholastics  held  species  to  be 
1  P.  510.  2  P.  509. 


SCHOLASTICISM  33 

"  natural,"  not  a  congeries  of  phenomena  by  the 
similarity  of  which  "  class "  is  formed.  The 
point  is  important,  and  Mr.  Wells  is  entirely 
unaware  of  it,  with  the  result  that  his  home-made 
illustrations  of  the  Scholastic  Realist  doctrine  are: 
little  better  than  literary  libels.  A  word  of 
protest  against  this  sort  of  thing  seems  called  for 
when  Mr.  Wells  gives  his  readers  to  understand 
that  his  absurd  caricature  represents  what  was, 
at  any  time,  the  philosophy  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  Though  Mr.  Wells  protests  against 
the  modern  fashion  of  decrying  the  philosophical 
discussion  of  the  mediaeval  "  schoolmen "  as 
tedious  and  futile,  he  adds :  "  It  had  to  assume 
a  severely  technical  form  because  the  dignitaries 
of  the  Church,  ignorant  and  intolerant,  were  on 
the  watch  for  heresy."1  Unfortunately  for  this 
ingenious  theory,  the  said  "  technical  form"  existed 
before  there  were  any  dignitaries  of  the  Church — 
it  owes  its  origin  to  Aristotle,  and  was  adopted 
in  the  schools  because  of  its  excellence  as  a 
didactic  method.  Leibnitz  presumably  was  not 
engaged  in  a  heresy-hunt  when  he  wrote  to 
Wagner : 

"  I  am  persuaded  that  if  we  acted  oftener  so, 
if  we  sent  one  another  syllogisms  and  prosyllo- 
gisms  with  the  replies  in  form,  we  could  very 
often,  in  the  most  important  scientific  questions, 
get  at  the  bottom  of  things,  and  dispel  a  great 
many  imaginations  and  dreams.  By  the  very 
nature  of  the  procedure  we  should  cut  short 

»  P.  508, 


34  THE  CRUS4DES 

repetitions,  exaggerations,  digressions,  incomplete 
expositions,  voluntary  or  involuntary  omissions, 
mistakes  of  order,  misunderstandings,  and  all 
the  annoying  results  that  follow  from  these 
things."1 

It  is  just  possible  that  the  "  schoolmen " 
thought  so  too.  However,  an  account  of  the 
"  schoolmen,"  in  which  there  is  one  passing 
allusion  to  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  need  not  be  taken 
too  seriously. 

Mr.  Wells  is  not  a  sympathetic  chronicler  of 
the  Crusades.  To  him,  as  a  Humanitarian,  they 
are  merely  foolish  expeditions  resulting  in  great 
loss  of  human  life,  interesting  only  in  so  far  as 
the  "  will  to  crusade  "  may  be  regarded  as  the 
germ  of  the  "  will  to  power."  For  him  they  are 
merely  an  illustration  of  how  out  of  evil  cometh 
good.  Contrary  to  the  intention  of  those  who 
promoted  them,  the  Crusades  helped  to  demo- 
cratize Europe,  since,  according  to  Mr.  Wells, 
the  crusaders  naturally  returned  from  the  East 
with  a  lessened  regard  for  Papal  authority,  and  are 
therefore  to  be  hailed  as  heralds  of  revolt.  It  is 
perhaps  too  much  to  expect  a  man  of  Mr.  Wells's 
temperament  to  show  any  real  understanding  of 
the  chivalrous  spirit  of  the  crusaders,  but  one 
would  have  thought  that  a  man  of  his  vision  would 
have  seen  in  these  much  abused  Crusades  prime 
factors  in  the  advancement  of  civilization.  Guizot 
long  ago  pointed  out  how  much  Europe  owed  to 
the  Greek  and  Saracenic  civilizations,  with  which 

1  Quoted  by  Cardinal  Mercier  in  his  Logique,  p.  171. 


AND  MR.  WELLVS  PREJUDICE        35 

the  crusaders  were  brought  into  contact.     The 
mere  linking-up  of  East  and  West,  and  the  inter- 
communication in  literature,  art,  and  commerce, 
brought  about  by  the  Crusades,  ought  to  be  suf- 
ficient pragmatic  justification  even  for  Mr.  Wells. 
How  enthusiastically  he  would  have  written  of 
the  beneficent  effects  of  these  same  Crusades  had 
they  not  been  under  the  aegis  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  !     In  one  of  his  novels  he  makes  his  hero 
speak  of  the  priests  of   the  Catholic  Church  as 
men  with  faces  averted  from  the  dawn  and  feet 
set  backwards.     Mr.  Wells  believes  this.     It  is  a 
cardinal  article  of  his  creed,  and  much  of  his 
history  is  understandable  only  as  a  subscription 
to  it.     In  this   Outline  the  Catholic  Church  is 
always  the  clog  on  the  wheel  of  progress.     Thus: 
"  Men  of  faith  and  wisdom  believe  in  growth  and 
their  fellow-men;  but  priests,  even  such  priests 
as  Gregory  VII.,  believe  in  the  false  *  efficiency  ' 
of  an  imposed  discipline."1     An  historian  who 
can  write  thus  of  the  Hildebrand  whom  Dean 
Milman  bids  us  regard  with  awe  as  a  benefactor 
of  mankind  has  indeed  let  his  prejudice   against 
priests  run  away  with  him.     But  it  is  perhaps 
only  what  might  be  expected  from  one  who  is 
convinced  that  "  Rome  has  always  had  too  much 
of  the  shrewdness  of  the  priest  and  too  little  of 
the  power  of  the  prophet."2    As  Mr.  Wells  assures 
us  that  every  chapter  of  his  History  has  been  sub- 
mitted to  an  expert,  we  cannot  help  wondering 
who  was  the  expert  who  passed  the  following: 
1  P.  462.  2  P.  461. 


36  PAPAL  DISPENSATION 

"  The  Pope  might  in  many  instances  set  aside 
the  laws  of  the  Church  in  individual  cases;  he 
might  allow  cousins  to  marry,  permit  a  man  to 
have  two  wives,  or  release  anyone  from  a  vow."] 
Mr.  Wells  apparently  belongs  to  the  same  school 
of  thought  as  the  boy  who  declared  that  during 
an  interdict  the  Pope  forbids  all  births,  deaths, 
and  marriages  for  a  year.  Some  expert  might 
have  explained  to  Mr.  Wells  that  there  are  laws 
and  laws,  and  that  even  the  Pope  cannot  dispense 
from  the  natural,  or  from  the  divine  positive,  law. 
Possibly  Mr.  Wells  has  in  mind  some  case  in  which 
a  man,  after  his  marriage  has  been  declared  null 
ab  initiOy  has  contracted  a  valid  marriage  whilst 
his  first  "  wife "  was  alive.  Such  cases  are 
contemplated  in  every  modern  code  of  civil 
law,  and  the  charge  of  permitting  polygamy, 
which  Mr.  Wells  brings  against  the  Church, 
might  just  as  reasonably  be  levelled  at  the 
British  Constitution. 

By  the  time  his  chronicles  reach  the  thirteenth 
century,  Mr.  Wells  is  already  surveying  the  ruins 
of  the  Church  of  Rome :  "  It  now  behoves  us  to 
attempt  a  diagnosis  of  the  failure  of  the  Roman 
Church  to  secure  and  organize  the  good  will  of 
mankind."2  That  supposed  failure  he  attributes 
to  the  fact  that  the  Church  "  had  become  dog- 
matic." Such  passages  as  the  following  about 
Popes  and  Cardinals  are  not  in  the  best  possible 
taste :  "  And  it  was  just  because  many  of  them 
probably  doubted  secretly  of  the  entire  soundness 

1  P.  46*,  *  F.  464. 


WELLS  THE  PROPHET  OF  PROGRESS  37 

of  their  vast  and  elaborate  doctrinal  fabric  that 
they  would  brook  no  discussion  of  it.  They  were 
intolerant  of  questions  or  dissent;  not  because 
they  were  sure  of  their  faith,  but  because  they 
Twere  not."1  Such  imputations  of  bad  faith  are 
aiore  easily  made  than  substantiated,  and  befit 
the  mud-slinging  controversialist  rather  than  the 
impartial  historian.  Because  we  respect  his 
honesty  of  purpose  we  regret  that  Mr.  Wells 
ha?  soiled  his  hands  with  such  weapons.  That 
he  is  doing  his  best  to  be  fair  to  the  historic  Church 
we  have  no  doubt.  But  fair  he  cannot  be — he  is 
psychologically  unfitted  for  the  task  of  Church 
historian.  His  disqualification  lies  precisely  in 
the  fact  that  he  is  himself  a  religious  reformer, 
zealously  propagating  a  new  evangel.  With 
much  suffering  of  soul  he  has  risen  from  arid 
agnosticism  to  a  shadowy  theism,  and  found  a 
faith — a  faitla  in  a  "  younger  god,"  struggling 
and  groping  to  find  himself.  In  the  service  of 
that  god  Mr.  Wells  has  become  the  Prophet  of 
Progress,  preaching  that  nothing  is,  was,  or  ever 
can  be  final.  Like  Nietzsche,  he  has  set  out 
to  blaze  a  new  path — into  the  future  and  back- 
wards across  the  ages.  Under  the  spell  of  his 
message,  facts  are  moulded  to  fit  theory,  and  his 
history  becomes  little  better  than  a  novel  with  a 
purpose — a  thrilling  story  designed  to  show  that 
the  new  faith  is  higher  and  nobler  than  the  old. 

In    view    of    the    many    partisan    Protestant 
accounts  of  the  "  Glorious  Reformation,"  which 
1  P.  465. 


38  MONASTICISM 

for  centuries  have  passed  as  history,  we  owe 
a  debt  of  gratitude  to  Mr.  Wells  for  having  made 
a  stand,  in  a  popular  work,  against  what  the 
Cambridge  Modern  History  calls  "  the  long  con- 
spiracy against  the  revelation  of  truth/3  He 
may  be,  and  oftentimes  is,  mistaken  in  his  notions 
about  the  Reformation,  but  he  does  not  degrade 
his  graceful  pen  by  bolstering  up  "  reformed 
Churches."  He  is  under  no  delusions  as  to  their 
origins,  and  obviously  for  him  it  is  the  historic 
Church  or  none  at  all. 

He  discerns  the  germ  of  the  Reformation  in  the 
early  Middle  Ages,  when,  in  his  opinion,  the 
Catholic  Church  foolishly  antagonized  "  the  Nor- 
dic barbarians "  of  the  North  and  West  by 
introducing  what  he  regards  as  distinctively 
Oriental  institutions — monasticism  and  sacerdotal 
celibacy.  A  sufficient  answer  to  this  somewhat 
grotesque  theory  is  contained  in  a  footnote  to 
the  text,  by  Mr.  Ernest  Barker,  who  says : 

"  I  do  not  think  this  is  just.  The  Anglo-Saxons 
were  not  antimonastic.  They  were  converted 
by  Benedictine  monks  in  600;  just  after  700  they 
sent  out  monks  to  convert  Germany;  about  960, 
under  Dunstan  and  Edgar,  they  experienced  a 
monastic  revival.  The  Normans,  after  1066, 
introduced  the  Cluniac  and  Cistercian  Orders, 
and  spread  monasticism,  while  the  earlier  North- 
men, after  900,  were  quite  favourable  to  the 
Church  in  England.  Note  that  Gregory's  im- 
position of  celibacy  on  the  clergy  was  accepted, 
and  willingly  accepted,  by  the  contemporary 


THE  REFORMATION  39 

lay- world.  William  the  Conqueror,  through 
Bishop  Lanfranc,  enforced  celibacy  in  England."1 

Despite  this  footnote,  and  in  the  face  of  all 
historical  evidence,  Mr.  Wells  persists  in  asserting 
that  in  the  West  celibate  priests  "  were  regarded 
with  the  profoundest  scepticism  and  suspicion." 
In  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  he 
professes  to  find  "  an  intellectual  attack  upon 
the  priest  as  priest,  and  upon  the  ceremony  of  the 
Mass,"2  without,  however,  indicating  anything 
particularly  intellectual  in  the  noisy  brawlings 
of  the  Lollards  and  Hussites.  After  that,  he  comes 
to  the  Reformation  proper,  of  which  he  writes : 

"  The  series  of  ensuing  changes,  those  changes 
that  are  known  collectively  in  history  as  the 
Reformation,  took  on  a  threefold  aspect.  There 
was  the  Reformation  according  to  the  princes, 
who  wanted  to  stop  the  flow  of  money  to  Rome 
and  to  seize  the  moral  authority,  the  educational 
power,  and  the  material  possessions  of  the  Church 
within  their  dominions.  There  was  the  Refor- 
mation according  to  the  people,  who  sought  to 
make  Christianity  a  power  against  unrighteousness, 
and  particularly  against  the  unrighteousness  of 
the  rich  and  powerful.  And,  finally,  there  was 
the  Reformation  within  the  Church.,  of  which 
St.  Francis  of  Assisi  was  the  precursor,  which 
sought  to  restore  the  goodness  of  the  Church 
and,  through  its  goodness,  to  restore  its  power."3 

In  the  princely  Reformation,  wherein  so  many 
Protestant  historians  have  professed  to  trace  the 
*  P.  497.  2  P.  497.  '  P.  504. 


40  THE  REFORMATION 

Hand  of  God,  Mr.  Wells,  with  truer  insight, 
discerns  the  clutching  grasp  of  the  statesman : 

"  As  England,  Scotland,  Sweden,  Norway,  Den- 
mark, North  Germany,  and  Bohemia  broke  away 
from  the  Roman  Communion,  the  princes  and 
other  ministers  showed  the  utmost  solicitude 
to  keep  the  movement  well  under  control.  Just 
as  much  reformation  as  would  sever  the  link  with 
Rome  they  permitted;  anything  beyond  that, 
any  dangerous  break  towards  the  primitive  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  or  the  crude  direct  interpretation 
of  the  Bible,  they  resisted.  The  Established 
Church  of  England  is  one  of  the  most  typical 
and  successful  of  the  resulting  compromises. 
It  is  still  sacramental  and  sacerdotal;  but  its 
organization  centres  in  the  Court  and  the  Lord 
Chancellor,  and  though  subversive  views  may, 
and  do,  break  out  in  the  lower  and  less  pros- 
perous ranks  of  its  priesthood,  it  is  impossible  for 
them  to  struggle  up  to  any  position  of  influence 
and  authority."1 

Of  the  Reformation  within  the  Church  Mr. 
Wells  writes  with  sympathy  and  insight,  pointing 
out  that  this  movement,  which  had  its  beginnings 
with  the  appearance  of  the  Black  and  Grey  Friars 
as  far  back  as  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries, 
received  a  new  and  powerful  impetus  when  most 
needed,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  from  the  foun- 
dation of  the  Society  of  Jesus.  To  the  Jesuit 
Fathers,  Mr.  Wells,  as  a  Humanitarian,  pays 
the  highest  possible  compliment: 

1  P.  504- 


AND  LABOUR  41 

"They  raised  the  level  of  intelligence,  they 
quickened  the  conscience  of  all  Catholic  Europe, 
they  stimulated  Protestant  Europe  to  competitive 
educational  efforts.  .  .  .  Some  day,  it  may  be, 
we  shall  see  a  new  Order  of  Jesuits,  vowed  not 
to  the  service  of  the  Pope,  but  to  the  service  of 
mankind."1 

Some  day,  let  us  hope,  Mr.  Wells  may  realize 
that  these  two  services  are  not  incompatible, 
but  merge  in  the  service  of  the  Invisible 
King. 

So  far,  we  are  in  substantial  agreement  with 
Mr.  Wells's  account  of  the  religious  movements 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  But  we  are  moved  to 
ask,  was  there,  outside  the  Church,  a  Reformation 
according  to  the  people,  which  was  "  essentially 
religious  "  ?  Here  we  think  that  Mr.  Wells  has 
lost  sight  of  that  economic  interpretation  of  his- 
tory upon  which  he  elsewhere  lays  so  much  stress. 
It  is  curious  that  he  does  not  pause  to  ask  himself 
what  must  have  been  the  effect  on  the  common 
people  of  that  princely  Reformation  which  he 
appraises  so  accurately.  Its  immediate  effect 
was  to  accelerate  the  coming  economic  revolution. 
Already,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  a  growing 
commerce  had  given  rise  to  "  business  methods  " 
which  clashed  with  the  ethical  teaching  of  the 
Church.  The  dawn  of  commerce  was  the  end  of 
the  "  Golden  Age  of  Labour."  That  age,  as 
a  Socialist  writer  has  pointed  out,  "had  been 
mainly  agricultural,  when  the  need  for  wealth 

1  P.  507- 


42       ORIGINS  OF  COMMERCIALISM 

did  not  exist,  nor  the  means  of  preserving  it 
when  amassed,  nor  any  method  of  investing  it. 
At  such  a  stage  it  was  easy  to  enforce  the  un- 
worldly commands  to  hoard  not,  to  lend  not  at 
interest,  to  exploit  not,  and  to  inculcate  charity 
and  brotherhood,  with  others  of  what  are  now 
called  counsels  of  perfection.  With  the  growth 
of  manufactures  and  commerce  there  came  a 
conflict  between  the  interests  of  trade  and  these 
teachings.  The  culmination  of  this  struggle  is 
known  as  the  Reformation,  the  most  misleading 
name  ever  applied  to  any  movement.  It  was  in 
no  sense  a  reform,  it  was  a  revolt  against  certain 
objective  Scriptural  teachings  of  the  Church  to 
which  obedience  was  only  possible  for  human 
nature,  when  the  power  to  exploit  another  was 
strictly  limited;  and  its  issue  was  the  overthrow 
of  a  Church  whose  morality  had  become  alien  to 
the  spirit  of  the  age."1 

Prior  to  the  Reformation,  everywhere  in  Europe 
the  law  of  the  land  was  the  Canon  Law  of  the 
Church — a  law  based  on  Christian  principles. 
In  the  princely  Reformation  that  law  was  abolished 
in  the  interests  of  the  governing  and  possessing 
classes,  wrho  promptly  enacted  new  laws  framed 
for  the  ignoble  purpose  of  enabling  commercialism 
to  obtain  labour  at  its  own  price.  Thus,  in  this 
country,  in  1536;  almsgiving  was  made  a  legal 
offence  punishable  by  a  fine  of  ten  times  the 
amount  bestowed.  Davidson,  in  his  Annals  of 
Toil,  has  shown  how,  during  the  Reformation 
1  A  Socialists  View  of  the  Reformation,  by  T,  D.  Benson,  p.  4. 


FOUND  IN  THE  REFORMATION    43 

period,  wages  sunk  to  starvation-level.  The 
common  people  were  ground  down  body  and 
soul.  The  industrial  revolution,  which  began 
in  the  fifteenth  century,  affected  not  merely 
man's  social  life,  but,  even  more  radically,  his 
religious  life.  Add  to  these  altered  conditions 
the  fact  that  three  successive  visitations  of  the 
Black  Death  had  left  the  people  on  the  eve  of 
the  Reformation  with  few  priests  to  attend  to 
their  souls  (Mr.  Wells  himself  reminds  us  that  the 
plague  swept  away  one-half  of  the  priests  of 
Yorkshire),  and  we  readily  understand  how  the 
wretched  conditions  of  the  daily  lives  of  the 
people  must  have  moulded  their  religious  outlook. 
Mr.  Benson,  looking  at  this  period  through 
Labour's  eyes,  says : 

"The  plea  that  the  licentiousness  of  the  clergy 
and  monks  caused  the  Reformation  cannot  be 
sustained,  for  there  was  but  a  sectional  improve- 
ment in  morals  resulting  from  it,  due  to  the 
influence  of  the  Puritan  movement.  This  move- 
ment, like  all  ascetic  religious  movements,  arose 
from  the  industrial  conditions  of  the  people. 
The  hours  of  labour  had  been  doubled,  the  rate 
of  wages  was  barely  one  quarter,  and  the  sad, 
forlorn  condition  of  the  people  produced  a  life 
of  gloom  and  hardship  which  decided  their 
religious  views  and  rendered  their  theology  as 
austere,  ascetic,  and  unjoyous  as  their  own  lives. 
...  In  lives  where  nothing  but  toil  and  starva- 
tion exist,  a  sympathetic,  beneficent  Deity  finds 
no  place,  and  bigotry,  intolerance,  and  super- 


44  THE  CASE  OF  LUTHER 

stition  are  the  natural  results  of  labour  without 
rest  and  of  starvation  without  hope."1 

In  dealing  with  a  later  period  of  history,  Mr. 
Wells  himself  shows  how  changes  in  the  methods 
of  industry  affect  the  whole  structure  of  society. 
It  is  strange  that  he  does  not  see  this  principle 
already  at  work  in  the  sixteenth  century.  To 
describe  the  Reformation  according  to  the  people 
as  "  essentially  religious  "  is  surely  to  close  one's 
eyes  to  one  of  the  most  vital  factors  in  the  whole 
Reformation  movement — the  economic  factor. 
If,  as  Lecky  says,  "  inventions  that  are  purely 
mechanical  ultimately  influence  profoundly  both 
opinions  and  morals,"  the  historian  can  hardly 
fail  to  recognize  in  the  industrial  revolution  of 
the  sixteenth  century  one  of  the  prime  causes 
of  the  religious  changes  of  the  period. 

In  striking  contrast  with  his  character-sketches 
of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  and  St.  Ignatius  Loyola 
is  Mr.  Wells's  treatment  of  Luther.  He  barely 
mentions  him,  and  then  only  to  chronicle  that  he 
set  up  the  Bible  as  a  counter-authority  to  the 
Church,  "  a  strategic  rather  than  an  abiding 
position,"  as  the  modern  drift  of  Nonconformity 
has  shown.  One  suspects  that  Mr.  Wells  endorses 
Matthew  Arnold's  estimate  of  Luther :  "  a  Philis- 
tine; but  a  Philistine  of  genius."  It  is  passing 
strange  that  Mr.  Wells,  with  his  passion  for  educa- 
tion, has  nothing  to  say  of  the  educational  havoc 
wrought  by  the  Reformers.  He  cannot  be  un- 
aware of  the  classical  groan  of  Erasmus,  "  Ubicun- 

1  Of.  cit.9  p.  If. 


EDUCATION  45 


que  re  gnat  Luther  anismus,  ibi  est  litter  arum  in- 
teritus"  (Wherever  Lutheranism  reigns,  there 
letters  die).  Education  is  to  Mr.  Wells  the 
greatest  of  all  shibboleths.  He  has  written  a 
novel  to  show  that  our  University  system  is  all 
wrong,  and  that  our  private  and  public  schools 
are  no  better.  He  returns  to  the  charge  in  his 
Outline.  Gladstone,  notwithstanding  his  "  double 
first  "  at  Oxford,  is  written  down  an  ignorant 
man,  "with  no  knowledge  of  ethnology,  no  vision 
of  history  as  a  whole,  misconceiving  the  record  of 
geology,  ignorant  of  the  elementary  ideas  of 
biological  science,  of  modern  political,  social,  and 
economic  science,  and  modern  thought  and 
literature  I"1 

And,  "  the  education  of  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
typical  of  that  ruling-class  education  which  has 
dominated  British  and  European  affairs,  so  far  as 
they  have  been  dominated  by  ideas,  up  to  the 
present  time."2 

Now  Mr.  Wells  himself  acknowledges  that  that 
University  system  is  a  product  of  the  Reformation : 
"  We  have  told  how  in  England  the  Universities 
after  the  Reformation  ceased  to  have  a  wide 
popular  appeal,  how  they  became  the  educational 
preserve  of  the  nobility  and  the  gentry,  and  the 
strongholds  of  the  Established  Church."3  And 
yet,  in  another  of  his  fortnightly  parts,  in  the  same 
paragraph  in  which  he  admits  that  "  the  Catholic 
Church,  through  its  propagandas,  its  popular 
appeals,  its  schools  and  Universities,  opened  up 

i  P.  663.  2  P.  664.  3  P.  641. 


46  MR.  WELLS  AS  PARTISAN 

the  prospect  of  the  modern  educational  state 
in  Europe,"  he  says  of  this  Church:  "  Its  con- 
ception of  education  was  not  release,  not  an 
invitation  to  participate,  but  the  subjugation 
of  minds."1  Somewhere  in  his  History  Mr. 
Wells  expresses  the  view  that  every  man  is  a 
partisan — and  certainly  he  himself  is.  He  cannot 
well  deny  that  the  Catholic  Church  founded  the 
Universities,  which  were  the  cradle  of  all  modern 
learning,  but  he  would  have  us  believe  that  in 
founding  them  she  was  under  the  impression 
that  she  was  turning  out,  not  a  cradle,  but  a 
compress — something  that  would  hinder  and 
hamper  all  natural  growth  and  expansion.  The 
kind  of  people  who  advocate  the  abolition  of 
formal  logic  are  fond  of  telling  us  that  the  function 
of  education  is  "  to  draw  out,  not  to  cram  in." 
There  is  an  obvious  fallacy  lurking  here.  Before 
we  can  draw  out,  we  must  put  something  in. 
The  mind  must  be  subjugated  to  something — 
preferably  to  knowledge,  and  this  is  the  only 
subjugation  to  which  minds  were  treated  in  the 
mediaeval  Universities.  Cramming  is  acknow- 
ledged to  be  a  modern  "  educational "  vice, 
which  came  in  with  Examinations,  Certificates, 
Ciplomas,  Preceptors,  Inspectors,  et  hoc  genus 
omne.  "  At  Oxford  and  Cambridge,"  says  Sir 
Arthur  Quiller-Couch,  in  his  recent  book  On 
the  Art  of  Reading,  "  we  find  in  their  early  days 
no  trace  of  any  examination  at  all."2  They  were, 
in  fact,  in  their  Catholic  days,  just  such  seats  of 
1  P.  496.  2  P.  32. 


AND  AS  FANCIFUL  THEORIST      47 

learning  as  Mr.  Wells  desires — except  for  the  fact 
that  they  were  "  tainted  "  with  dogmatic  religion. 
That  is  where  Mr.  Wells  falls  foul  of  them. 
It  is  the  supposed  subjugation  of  minds  to  dog- 
matic religion  to  which  he  really  objects,  though 
why  subjugation  to  the  principles  of  religion 
should  be  more  inimical  (or  inimical  at  all,  for 
that  matter)  to  sound  education  than  subjugation 
to  the  principles  of  "  science,"  he  would  perhaps 
find  it  difficult  to  explain.  It  is  quite  useless 
to  point  out  to  Mr.  Wells  that  there  is  not,  and 
cannot  be,  any  conflict  between  science  and 
religion.  His  quarrel  with  dogmatic  religion 
is  that  it  is  based  on  a  final  revelation,  and  his 
basic  theory  of  universal  progression  will  not 
permit  him  even  to  enquire  if  perchance  this  final 
revelation  be  a  fact.  It  is  surely  better  that 
minds  should  be  subjugated  to  solid  facts  than  to 
fanciful  theories. 

Mr.  Wells's  prejudice  against  dogmatic  religion 
is  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  he  lays  at  its  door 
all  the  absurdities  that  have  ever  been  perpetrated 
in  its  name  by  misguided  fanatics  throughout 
the  ages,  and,  of  course,  all  the  literary  and  scien- 
tific lapses  of  ecclesiastics  of  every  and  any  shade 
of  belief.  The  doctrine  of  "  special  creation," 
he  complains,  stood  in  the  way  of  the  acceptance 
of  Darwinism,  and  Bishop  Wilberforce,  in  the 
interests  of  orthodoxy,  assailed  Huxley  on  Biblical 
grounds.  Now  the  theory  of  "  special  creation," 
to  which  Mr.  Wells  takes  exception,  is  assuredly 
no  dogma  of  the  Catholic  Church.  It  is,  as 


48  "  SPECIAL  CREATION " 

Huxley  showed  at  the  time  of  the  controversy, 
a  distinctively  Protestant  doctrine,  which  owed 
its  prominence  in  post-Reformation  theology  to 
the  vogue  of  Milton's  Paradise  Lost,  in  which 
creation  is  thus  crudely  depicted : 

The  sixth,  and  of  creation  last,  arose 
With  evening  harps  and  matin ;  when  God  said, 
Let  the  earth  bring  forth  soul  living  in  her  kind, 
Cattle  and  creeping  things,  and  beast  of  the  earth, 
Each  in  their  kind.     The  earth  obeyed  and  straight 
Opening  her  fertile  womb  teem'd  at  a  birth 
Innumerous  living  creatures,  perfect  forms, 
Limb'd  and  full  grown.  .  .  . 

##**•* 
The  grassy  clods  now  calved ;  now  half  appear'd 
The  tawny  lion,  pawing  to  get  free 
His  hinder  parts,  then  springs  as  broke  from  bonds, 
And  rampant  shakes  his  brindled  mane;  the  ounce, 
The  libbard,  and  the  tiger,  as  the  mole 
Rising,  the  crumbled  earth  above  them  threw 
In  hillocks:  the  swift  stag  from  under  ground 
Bore  up  his  branching  head. 

(Paradise  Lost,  Book  VII.,  line  400), 

A  conception  of  this  kind  is  opposed  to  any 
theory  of  evolution,  but  no  such  theory  was  held 
by  the  great  pre-Reformation  scholars.  St.  Au- 
gustine formulated  a  theistic  theory  of  evolution 
based  on  the  Mosaic  cosmogony.1  St.  Thomas 
thought  abiogenesis  not  incompatible  with  a 
theistic  interpretation  of  the  universe,  since  God 
might  have  given  to  matter  the  power  of  evolving 
life.2  "  For  centuries  after  the  time  of  St. 

1  De  Genes  i  ad  liter  am,  lib.  V.,  cap.  v.  and  xxiii. 

2  Summa  TheoL,  I.  Ixix.  2. 


NOT  THE  CATHOLIC  VIEW          49 

Thomas,  the  theory  of  spontaneous  generation 
was  universally  held  and  taught  in  all  the  schools 
of  Europe,"  says  Professor  Zahn.1  It  was  aban- 
doned only  after  the  experiments  of  Redi  (1668) 
had  demonstrated  that  the  apparent  production 
of  life  from  non-life  was  due  to  the  action  of 
living  germs.  The  history  of  the  mediaeval 
controversy  with  regard  to  abiogenesis  is  in  itself 
sufficient  to  convince  any  honest  enquirer  that 
the  Catholic  Church  did  not  put  barriers  in  the 
way  of  scientific  progress.  The  oft-cited  case  of 
Galileo  is,  as  Cardinal  Newman  says,  "  the  ex- 
ception which  proves  the  rule."  It  is,  of  course, 
enlarged  upon  by  Mr.  Wells,  who  describes  how 
Galileo  "  knelt  before  ten  cardinals  in  scarlet, 
an  assembly  august  enough  to  overawe  truth 
itself,  while  he  amended  the  creation  he  had 
disarranged.  The  story  has  it  that,  as  he  rose 
from  his  knees,  after  repeating  his  recantation, 
he  muttered,  '  Eppur  si  muove ' — c  It  moves 
nevertheless.5  "2  Of  this  picturesque  story  there 
is  no  trace  whatever  before  1761 — more  than  a 
century  after  Galileo's  death.  Though  a  mani- 
fest fabrication,  it  is  one  of  those  little  artistic 
touches  which  not  infrequently  distract  Mr. 
Wells's  attention  from  the  dull  business  of  narrat- 
ing facts.  It  would  have  been  more  to  the  point 
had  he  endeavoured  to  give  his  readers  a  correct 
idea  of  the  mental  atmosphere  of  Galileo's  day. 
From  Mr.  Wells's  account  of  the  matter  no  one 


1  Evolution  and  Dogma,  p.  45  < 

2  p.  513. 


S-o  THE  GALILEO  CASE 

would  suspect  that  Galileo's  contemporary,  Lord 
Bacon,  "  the  Father  of  Modern  Science,"  vio- 
lently opposed  the  Copernican  system.  And  with 
him  in  opposition  was  Descartes,  "  the  Father 
of  Modern  Philosophy"!  "In  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  century  and  long  afterwards," 
says  Hallam,  "  there  were  still  mathematicians 
of  no  small  repute  who  struggled  staunchly  for 
the  immovability  of  the  earth."  In  the  face 
of  these  facts,  is  it  fair  to  represent  the  Church 
as  "struggling  gallantly  against  the  light"?1 
The  whole  question  was  then  a  very  open  one,  as 
Huxley  recognized  when  he  wrote  to  Mivart 
(November  12,  1885):  "I  gave  some  attention 
to  the  case  of  Galileo  when  I  was  in  Italy,  and  I 
arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  Pope  and  the 
College  of  Cardinals  had  rather  the  best  of  it." 

Mr.  Wells  has  always  been  a  keen  student  of 
social  science,  and  his  diagnosis  of  the  evils  that 
afflict  us  is  penetrating  and  accurate.  We  are 
therefore  the  more  astonished  to  find  him  expres- 
sing the  opinion  that  Marx,  as  a  prophet,  "  is 
being  more  and  more  justified  by  events."2  We 
have  social  ills  enough,  but  they  are  not  the  ills 
which,  according  to  Marx,  the  historic  necessities 
should  have  inflicted  on  us  long  ere  this.  Thus, 
Marx  prophesied  that  the  trend  of  industrial 
conditions  would  make  the  lot  of  the  working 
man  worse  and  worse.  It  is  impossible  to  deny 
that  to-day  there  are  more  working  men  with  a 
comfortable  income  than  ever  before.  Wealth, 

1  P.  513  2  P.  647. 


KARL  MARX  5! 


he  maintained,  would  gradually  be  concentrated 
in  fewer  and  fewer  hands. 

"  It  is  sometimes  argued  against  Marx,"  says  Mr. 
Wells,  "  that  the  proportion  of  people  who  have 
savings  invested  has  increased  in  many  modern 
communities.  These  savings  are,  technically, 
'  capital,'  and  their  owners  '  capitalists '  to 
that  extent,  and  this  is  supposed  to  contradict 
the  statement  of  Marx  that  property  concen- 
trates into  few  and  fewer  hands.  Marx  used  many 
of  his  terms  carelessly  and  chose  them  ill,  and  his 
ideas  were  better  than  his  words.  When  he  wrote 
6 property '  he  meant ' property  so  far  as  it  is  power.' 
The  small  investor  has  remarkably  little  power  over 
his  invested  capital."3 

True,  but  he  has  some  capital  and  some  power 
over  it,  and  there  are  far  more,  and  not  far  fewer, 
people  with  capital  and  power  than  when  Marx 
wrote.2  It  has  been  well  said  that  the  history 
of  Socialism  is  a  history  of  false  prophecy.  These 
prophets  went  astray  because  they  neglected  one 
vital  factor  in  the  social  situation — the  psycho- 
logical factor.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  these 
champions  of  Humanity  forgot  that  the  proper 
study  of  man  is  mankind.  Marx  was  chiefly 
concerned  with  the  deification  of  a  mechanical 
system^  and  those  upon  whom  his  mantle  des- 

1  P.  647. 

2  It  may  be  argued  that  Marx  is  justified  in  the  menace  of 
the  Trust;  but  against  this  must  be  set  the  portent  of  the  Co- 
operative   Movement.     See    Christian    Socialism    (1920),    by 
Charles  E.  Raven,  chaps,  viii.-x. 


52  HUMAN  NATURE 

cended  studied  everything  and  anything  except 
the  nature  of  man  himself.  That  human  nature  is 
the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  to-morrow,  is  a 
truth  which  Mr.  Wells  himself  overlooks.  He 
sees  no  remedy  for  our  present  discontents  until, 
many  decades  hence,  we  are  in  a  position  to  set 
up  "  a  scientifically  conceived  political  system." 
He  assures  us  that  we  can  no  more  do  that  now 
than  our  fathers  in  1820  could  have  set  up  an 
electric  power-station.  Why  ?  Because  "  our 
science  of  human  relationships  is  still  so  crude 
and  speculative  as  to  leave  us  without  definite 
guidance  upon  a  score  of  primarily  important 
issues."1  It  does  not  occur  to  Mr.  Wells  that 
possibly  man  knows  as  much  about  the  principles 
which  govern,  or  ought  to  govern,  human  relation- 
ships as  he  is  ever  likely  to  know.  Such  is  his 
faith  in  progress  that  he  confidently  looks  to  the 
future  to  evolve  new  ethical  principles.  He  might 
as  well  expect  mathematicians  to  evolve  new 
numerals.  As  every  problem  of  arithmetic  is 
worked  out  by  correct  manipulation  of  the  figures 
from  one  to  ten,  so,  too,  every  problem  affecting 
the  soul  of  man  is  soluble  by  means  of  definite, 
unchangeable  Christian  principles.  To  plead  for 
more  figures,  or  new  figures,  to  work  out  a  sum 
would  be  to  plead  for  an  absurdity.  If  we 
cannot  work  the  sum,  the  fault  is  not  in  the  figures, 
but  in  our  ignorance  of  their  application.  And, 
if  we  cannot  see  our  way  clear  through  the 
problems  of  the  day,  the  fault  is  not  in  the  prin- 

*  P.  654. 


AND  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  PROGRESS    53 

ciples  of  Christianity,  but  in  our  not  applying, 
or  misapplying,  them.  The  remedy  is  not  in 
"  progress,"  but  in  reversion  to  the  principles  of 
Christ. 

In  these  pages  we  are  concerned  with  Mr. 
Wells's  History  only  in  so  far  as  it  touches  directly 
on  religious  issues.  His  record  of  purely  secular 
affairs  lies  beyond  our  scope,  and  we  cannot,  for 
instance,  enter  into  a  consideration  of  his  fascinat- 
ing presentment  of  the  cause  and  course  of  the 
Great  War.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  he  regards  the 
war  as  "  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  mentality 
of  the  period."  The  world  of  1913,  in  the 
retrospect,  is  seen  to  be  "  a  world  of  lost  and 
faded  beliefs,"  and  the  war  "  a  necessary  fulfil- 
ment of  such  an  age  of  drift."1  The  present  is  an 
age  of  disillusionment.  England  has  not  become 
a  land  fit  for  heroes.  The  time  is  out  of  joint,  and 
as  yet  we  discern  no  one  born  to  set  it  right. 
On  every  side  there  is  a  reaching  out,  a  groping 
after  a  vague  something  which  will  restore  to 
the  world  its  lost  stability.  "  We  call  this  stir 
towards  a  new  order,  this  refusal  to  drift  on  in 
the  old  directions,  unrest,"  says  Mr.  Wells, 
"  but  rather  is  it  hope  which  disturbs  the  world  "2 
—a  vague  hope  of  better  things,  a  hope  which 
Mr.  Wells  warns  us  will  be  dashed  to  the  ground, 
unless  religion  become  once  again  the  leaven  of 
society.  There  has  been,  in  Mr.  Wells's  phrase, 
"  a  de-civilization  of  men's  minds  "  through  the 
divorce  of  religious  teaching  from  organized  edu- 

i  P.  748.  2  P.  749. 


54  THE  WELLSIAN  UTOPIA 

cation;  but,  if  the  race  is  to  be  saved,  "  presently 
education  must  become  again  in  intention  and 
spirit  religious."1  Mr.  Wells  is  not  eating  his 
words.  He  is  at  pains  to  explain  that  by  religion 
he  does  not  mean  "  the  old  too  elaborate  religious 
formulae  "  which  he  throws  on  the  scrap-heap  of 
history,  but  "  a  common  world-religion,  very 
much  simplified  and  universalized  and  better 
understood " — a  religion  which  is  not  Chris- 
tianity, nor  Islam,  nor  Buddhism,  nor  any 
specialized  form,  but  "  religion  itself  pure  and 
undefiled;  the  Eightfold  Way,  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  brotherhood,  creative  service,  and  self- 
forgetfulness."2  This  elemental  religion  is  to 
bring  about  a  Humanitarian  Utopia,  in  which 
there  will  be  no  mad-houses,  no  custom-house 
officials,  no  large  police  forces  or  gaol  staffs; 
no  cheats,  sharpers,  gamblers,  forestallers,  para- 
sites, or  speculators,  but  in  which,  nevertheless, 
there  will  be  no  diminution  of  adventure  or  ro- 
mance.3 We  are  somewhat  dazed  by  this  vision 
of  the  "  unification  of  the  world,"  and  close  the 
chapter  feeling  that 

His  talk  was  like  a  spring  which  runs 
With  rapid  change  from  rocks  to  roses; 
It  slipped  from  politics  to  puns, 
It  passed  from  Mahomet  to  Moses. 

And,  after  all,  what  is  this  panacea  advocated 
by  Mr.  Wells  ?  Nothing  more  or  less  than  a 
return  to  the  "  Ethical  Religion  "  of  the  early 

ip.  751.  2P.  754-  3P.7S7- 


AND  PAST  FAILURES  55 

Victorian  Positivists — the  "  Service  of  Man " 
of  Cotter  Morison,  or  the  "  Religion  of  Science  " 
of  Paul  Carus — and  history  answers,  non  tali 
auxilio.  It  is  strange  that  a  man  of  Mr.  Wells's 
vision  cannot  read  aright  this  verdict  of  history. 
Cotter  Morison  himself  acknowledged  with  cha- 
grin that  many  who,  at  the  bidding  of  the  new 
ethic,  had  put  off  a  belief  in  God,  had  not  put 
on  a  belief  in  Humanity;  and  he  frankly  recognized 
the  danger  of  intellectual  and  moral  anarchy 
amongst  his  followers.  As  a  one-time  rationalist, 
Mr.  Wells  can  hardly  be  unaware  that  the  Ethical 
and  Humanitarian  Societies,  which  preach  the 
gospel  that  he  preaches,  were  founded  to  give 
practical  effect  to  the  teachings  of  rationalism. 
They  were  a  despairing  attempt  to  graft  "  re- 
ligious "  sentiment  on  to  the  sterilities  of  Ag- 
nosticism; and  the  most  conspicuous  thing  about 
them  is  their  admitted  failure  to  appeal  either 
to  the  head  or  to  the  heart  of  man.  The  essential 
sanity  of  the  human  race  rejects  the  deification 
of  Humanity,  and  insists  that  there  must  be  a 
transcendental  ground  for  the  "  service  of  human 
knowledge,  human  power,  and  human  unity " 
advocated  by  Mr.  Wells.  We  can  conceive  an 
Ethicist,  such  as  Mr.  Wells  depicts,  making  the 
best  of  the  painful  facts  of  life,  but  we  can- 
not imagine  him  giving  enthusiastic  service  in 
the  interests  of  the  hypothetical  progress  of 
Humanity.  Nor,  indeed,  could  Huxley,  who 
says: 

"  There  would  be  something  in  talk  of  this  kind, 


56  WELLS  AS  THE 

if,  in  Chinese  fashion,  the  present  generation 
could  pay  its  debts  to  its  ancestors;  otherwise 
it  is  not  clear  what  compensation  the  Eohippus 
gets  for  his  sorrows  in  the  fact  that  some  millions 
of  years  afterwards  one  of  his  descendants  wins 
the  Derby." 

Man  is  primarily  concerned  with  himself  and 
with  the  present,  and  for  that  reason  alone  the 
religion  of  Humanity  is  unlikely  ever  to  become 
the  mainspring  of  human  action.  Mr.  Wells 
raises  Humanity  to  the  altar  under  the  sway  of  a 
naive  optimism  which  is  hardly  justified  by 
history  as  he  writes  it.  Like  the  tyrant  of  old, 
he  strolls  in  the  garden  lopping  off  the  heads  of 
the  tallest  poppies — Caesar,  Alexander,  Charle- 
magne, Napoleon,  all  are  made  to  bite  the  dust — 
and  the  real  lesson  of  his  history  would  seem  to 
be  trust  in  God  rather  than  faith  in  man. 

There  is  unfortunately  no  automatic  register 
for  the  facts  of  history.  They  must  pass  through 
the  mould  of  the  historian's  mind  and  take  the 
impress  of  his  personality.  We  know  of  no  history 
in  which  the  personal  equation  is  so  pronounced 
as  in  this  work  of  Mr.  Wells.  We  have  here  not 
so  much  a  record  of  human  affairs  as  the  vision 
of  an  artist  enraptured  with  the  pageant  of  the 
ages;  the  passion  of  a  democrat  railing  at  kings 
and  princes ;  the  wail  of  a  pacifist  over  the  strifes 
of  men ;  and  in  it  all  and  through  it  all,  the  spirit 
of  emancipation  chafing  at  all  restraint.  This 
spirit  is  in  some  measure  responsible  for  his  atti- 
tude to  the  Catholic  Church,  but  his  marked  anta- 


HERACLITUS  OF  HISTORT          57 


gonism  has  deeper  roots.  A  Church  which  is 
semper  eadem  cannot  well  be  made  to  harmonize 
with  a  philosophy  of  change,  and  Mr.  Wells  is 
the  Heraclitus  of  history  proclaiming  universal 
flux.  The  burden  of  his  message  is  that  nothing 
continueth  in  one  stay — everything  is  in  process 
of  becoming  something  else.  Yet,  if  we  are  to 
reason  at  all,  there  must  be  immutable  principles 
of  thought,  as  the  most  thorough-going  evolu- 
tionist tacitly  admits  when  he  builds  his  theories 
upon  theiji.  The  principles  of  Catholicism  are 
"  static  "  only  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  the 
principles  of  logic,  mathematics,  or  science  are 
static — all  alike  limit  the  mind  to  the  possession 
of  truth.  If  for  the  truth  she  teaches  the  Catholic 
Church  claims  a  divine  origin,  surely  her  claim  is 
the  more  worthy  of  investigation.  Had  Mr.  Wells 
investigated  that  claim  instead  of  merely  brushing 
it  aside,  he  might  perchance  have  found  that 
unifying  principle  of  which  his  History  stands  in 
need;  he  might  have  come  to  realize  even  more 
fully  than  the  Prince  of  Philosophers,  that  "  the 
Divine  it  is  which  holds  all  things  together."1 

1  Aristotle,  Metaphysics,  XI.  8. 


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